


War Thunder

by BulmaseekingVegeta



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Slow Burn, Smut, There's no denying the HEAT!, VBO Mini Bang 2019, WW2 AU, War Orphans, Wartime Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-16 18:42:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18697108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BulmaseekingVegeta/pseuds/BulmaseekingVegeta
Summary: In the midst of World War II, the Nazis, backed by the technology and vast armies of the Cold Empire, threatens the World, making the Axis powers nearly unstoppable in might.  But standing against them are the Allies with the support of lifelong Cold foes, the Saiyan Empire and their proud fighters.  Even then, the war is still woefully imbalanced and the military is in sore need of evening the balance.  While assessing military contracts for the war effort, handsome Colonel Vegeta Ouji meets beautiful and brilliant Heiress, Miss Bulma Briefs.  The attraction is immediate, but the Colonel is determined not to be distracted by the Woman… kind of… sort of… maybe not.  It proves even more difficult when he finds out that she’s working on the ultimate weapon:  the first combat worthy jet fighter.





	1. First Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> This is my submission for @Vegebulocracy’s Mini Bang. Thank you to @gilbec7796 for the cover art as well as @choobi_doodles for artwork to be posted in later chapters as they are scene depictions from those chapters. A huge thanks to @Froglady15 for being my first ever beta! I’m so excited for everyone to read this, so let’s get into it!!! And please leave any comments or critiques you have, all constructive things are good things.

(Cover art by @gilbec7796!  Thanks girl, love you bunches!!)

 

She was running late.  Every time.  Every time lately she seemed to be always running late.  Late to this.  Late to that.  Late to _everything_.  She felt like she should be wearing a bunny costume and running around with a pocket watch.  But that wouldn’t exactly help, now would it.  Nope.

She barged past people where she could.  Hollered at them to “Make a hole!” at other times.  God, she wanted to run, but these stupid red high heels.  These stupid rules about what was ladylike to wear were just arcane.  There was a war on!  Crap was being rationed like crazy, but somehow grown men in business suits still thought she needed to be running around in ridiculously high heels and short skirts on grated floors of all things!

*                      *                      *

Brass.  Everywhere he looked every fitting was brass.  An informed eye could spot the difference between actual gold, gilt, and brass making a cheap mockery of the good stuff.  Already the idea of nearly everything in front of his face being a pale imitation façade put him off of okaying this deal or being anywhere near it.  Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.

“Tch,” he rolled his eyes; with this place looking like crap, he sure as hell didn’t want _them_ to look like they fit in with this place, “For God’s sake, Lieutenant Son, quit messing with your tie.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel Ouji, it’s just… I’m not used to anything other than fatigues.”

“Well, get used to it.  Fast!”

“Yes, Sir.”  Was what he said, but Vegeta kept seeing him fiddling with the tie of his dress uniform.  Frankly, it was bad enough this young man had his mangy, wild, long hair pulled back into a ponytail, but a tie so loose it…

“Grrr, Radditz, I said knock it off!”

“Yes, Sir.”  The hand finally dropped down to his side.

But… “And if you start gulping, I will punch you in the throat,” Vegeta warned, closing his eyes and silently praying for God to give him the strength not to kill his subordinate right in front of…

The door opened.

*                      *                      *

They all sat round the long rectangular table in the ‘conference room’ that overlooked the factory down below.  The military delegation at the far end, the suits at the other.  The latter making eager to prove in person why they had been awarded the government contract.  Trying to put the cherry on the cake.

“You see here,” the young man, Yamcha he thought he was called, although Vegeta could care less what his name was, pointed at the schematic laid out on the table, “The new locomotive is a nice, big, industrial model, the biggest in the world to date, and well capable of pulling anything the military wants to haul.”

He stood tall, grinning, and puffing out his chest.

Colonel Vegeta Ouji stared him down with an ice-cold glare.  He hated preening gasbags.  And this one had pissed him off from the moment he’d opened the door and paraded in with an entourage of old men in fancy, expensive suits that Vegeta knew for a fact had been discouraged under the rationing that everyone—well, everyone _else_ —was suffering beneath.  These were fat cats pure and simple.  Bloviating buffoons drunk on the supposed intoxicating liquor of their own sense of highly exaggerated self-worth.  Pigs.  The lot of them.  And this dumbass was their figurehead and he didn’t even realize that was what they were doing with him.  While not an engineer, Vegeta did know something of locomotives and, yes, this would indeed be the largest hauler in the world, but there had been other parts of the design that this idiot had glossed over entirely.  _Or_ , as Vegeta suspected, he didn’t even know were there and none of these surrounding asses knew either.  None of them had designed this thing, but they sure as hell were taking credit for it… and they were taking credit for the crappy, normal parts of the design rather than the truly unique, helpful stuff.

*                      *                      *

She hurried up to the door.  Shit!  Closed!  She steadied herself and the wad of rolled up airship schematics and files in her arms.  Then she leaned down just a bit and knocked as best she could.  Straightening back up immediately to walk in with some semblance of grace and dignity while looking like some sort of secretary or go-for.

Nothing.

She leaned down a little again and knocked again.  Straightened again.

Nothing.

Oh, for the love of…!  If she was going to have to drop everything and pound on that damn door!

Bulma glared at the door and put these ridiculous heels to use.  She kicked that door and she kept kicking until…

Yamcha flung the door open with a furious look at her.  She met him with one of her own.  And the array behind him didn’t escape her notice either.  The bastard had started the meeting without her.  He had sent her to fetch these stupid documents that he clearly didn’t need and had started the meeting without her!

“Bulma,” Yamcha hissed at her, trying to keep this discussion discreet, “I’m conducting a meeting.”

“ _My_ meeting,” she corrected with venom.

“You’re in no condition to be running this meeting.  For God’s sake, you’ve still got a pair of goggles on your head.”

“Back up and let me in, Yamcha, or you’re fired.”

He gaped at her.

“That’s right.  I will fire you.  Here and now.  Right in front of everyone.  This is the Capsule Corporation.  _My_ family’s corporation.  Not yours.  We might be engaged, but don’t you dare ever keep me out of one of my own business meetings.  You preening gasbag.”

Yamcha’s mouth hung open so long she thought he might drool out of it.  Then he shut it and backed up.

Vegeta’s eyes had been riveted to the encounter at the door and stayed riveted to the blue haired woman wearing a ridiculous short and tight-fitting skirt as she walked in, arms laden with documents.  A ragged and well-worn pair of workman’s goggles on her head.  Somehow… she made the things look chic and sophisticated and part of her elegant look rather than a distraction.  And he got the feeling she wasn’t about to take them off for the meeting either.  He admired that—She looked to the table and her step faltered ever so slightly.  Almost imperceptibly, but Vegeta was a seasoned and skilled soldier.  Immediately after her misstep, her demeanor was even cooler than before.  She stepped right up to the head of the table, deposited her documents, and faced him head on.

“And what do you think of _my_ locomotive?”  She asked with an icepick in her voice.

“Victorian.”  Vegeta didn’t lie.

Something happened that startled him.  She smiled.  Not with her mouth.  But with her eyes.  These big sapphire things that were gorgeous as hell.

“Then how about an airship?”

He smirked.  She picked up one of the rolls and unfurled it right towards him.  He caught the edge single-handedly and held it down to the table.  Their eyes remaining locked.

“This is the first model,” she began.

“First,” he purred.  Shit!  Why the hell was he doing that?

“First of many.  I intend to build them to accommodate as many uses a possible.”

Somehow, the sound of her voice… so fierce… so intensely confident… it… made him feel uncomfortable.  Like his… shit, the crotch on his uniform pants was starting to feel tight.  What the hell was wrong with him?  The gears in his mind were turning and turning.  It wasn’t like he hadn’t met a beautiful woman before.  But… but… he looked down at the schematic.  He hadn’t met a woman like her before.

Thank God the Colonel broke eye contact first.  Holy crap, he was hot!  She was used to old men in uniforms for her government meetings.  Old men so fat and far past their prime that you knew instantly that the medals on their chests were from ages ago and so her job was more or less to feed into their Neanderthal tendencies and be something pretty for them to look and not actually listen to.  But this one.  Jet black hair in the shape of an exotic flame.  Penetrating black eyes.  Muscles very nearly bursting the seams of his uniform rather than a fat gut doing so.  Chest as resplendent as possible with medals and awards that he most definitely had earned.  He was such an anachronism.  Wait, was she panting?  Holy shit!  She was panting!

“As you can see, this first model is rather small.  It won’t reach tall heights and that’s somewhat the point.  It is small and meant to fly low in consideration of oxygen supply.”  Good.  Good.  Talk about the airship.  Talk about work.  That should help her get control of herself again.

“Oxygen?  It was my belief that these vessels ran on—”

“Oxygen for the soldiers.”

Despite himself, Vegeta sat up.  “Soldiers?”

She smiled.  Her smile was a… truly glorious thing to behold.  His stomach was doing flips and somersaults.

“Up until now, the Allies have been running this war as though it’s the wild, wild west.  I’m suggesting something that matches what the Nazis have been bringing to the battlefield.  And surpasses them.”

Vegeta nodded, intrigued like never before.  “They have dirigibles, but none that can be manned like this.”

Never before.

“No.  None.”  She purred proudly.

His eyes met hers and there was something in them, a heat, a blazing fire.  Her heart stopped, but she remained proud under it…  _Under_ …  Suddenly she had the urge to fan herself.  Was it hot in here?  Why was it suddenly so hot in here?

He saw the change in her breathing pattern immediately, the flush of her skin, heard the purr of her voice.  And felt the crotch of his pants threaten to cut of circulation.

His adrenaline couldn’t be running harder if she had pulled a revolver and fired it at him.  She wet her red lips and he felt the sudden urge to lick his lips… lick _her_ lips.  He blinked.  _What the fucking Hell was wrong with him?!_   God, he needn’t to get laid…  _Lay her_.  Shit!

“As you can see,” he sat up as she continued; yes, yes, focus on the airship, good, “the zeppelins would be far smaller and more aerodynamic than the ones in current use by the Nazis.”

“And have they—“

“No, they haven’t been looking into streamlining their design the way we have here.  It seems they believe their current models work effectively enough as it is now, and they’re right.”

“They have been looking to try and man the ones they have though.”

“And the big lumbering things fly too high and suffocate their airmen to death.  What do you think happens to the troops they test that theory on?”

He nodded, they’d been receiving reports from their network of spies with Nazi party and Hitler’s regime itself that told them that those tests were absolute disasters.  But they also stated that the Nazi High Command and their beloved Fuhrer hadn’t given up on it yet.  While he was being distracted, rather effectively by his dedication to creating a better rocket, the Atomic bomb, and his damn effective U-boats, for the time being, manning his zeppelins was on the back burner.  But that could change.  That could always change.  Just because the higher ups weren’t focused on this didn’t mean some lower down wouldn’t be.  There were always bottom feeders looking to take a big win to rise through the ranks or get in with the boss just like, Vegeta glanced over at Yamcha sitting on the sidelines next to one of the old dotards and glaring daggers at this forward, blue-haired woman, _that_ bottom feeder.  His eyes rose up to meet hers again.  God, she was a commanding presence.  And, of course, he felt the crotch of his pants get even tighter.  Cold shower.  He was going to need to get a cold shower back at the barracks after this meeting.  _If you don’t end up_ — _Shut up!  Just Shut!  Up!_

“The advantage we have for this right now is that they’re not working on it as hard as we are.”

‘We’, she was very confident in this ‘we’ thing.  Despite himself, he licked his lips.  God, he hoped that came across as excitement at the prospect of this airship and not that he was acting as big a horn dog as Radditz reportedly was.

Vegeta sat back, desperate to relieve some of the pressure in his pants.  Skillfully, he removed his hands from the table.  The roll of airship schematic tumbled back to her own fingertips as he placed his hands in his lap.  His eyes nearly bugged out of his hand.  Yep, cold, cold, freaking ice shower.

“Very good,” he said instead, his eyes not leaving hers.  “I shall report this addition to the Pentagon and get another contract drawn up for you, Miss…?”

“Briefs, Bulma Briefs.”

He nodded, so she was in charge of the company not the fool who’d swaggered in here in the first place.  A woman was running things and the men had all gotten… exactly what they deserved the moment she’d banged on that door, walked in here, and took command of the very meeting they had conspired to keep her from.

While he was wary of it, Vegeta stood up; glancing down at his lap as he did so and thanking God that his biology’s behavior wasn’t too unseemly.  Radditz on his left and Major Nappa on his right rose as well.

“Very well, shall we tour the facility now.”

Bulma nodded; good God, his bulge.  He was certainly… well… she nodded and abruptly turned for the door before her cheeks reddening anew was so blatantly obvious that it had nothing whatsoever to do with her hurry to get here.

She walked to the door, took hold of the handle, and turned back, “We shall.”


	2. In Private

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Colonel Vegeta Ouji has been tasked to assess the value of some government contracts to the war effort in West City. One such contract is with Capsule Corp., where he meets the beautiful and brilliant Heiress in charge of the company, Miss Bulma Briefs. She impresses him with engineering projects… and distracts him. Let alone does the Colonel ratify the current Capsule Corp. contract, but he gives the go-ahead to draw up a second one. However, his distraction doesn’t go unnoticed.
> 
> And neither does Yamcha's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again thank you to @Froglady15 for being my beta for the Vegebulocracy Mini Bang. It's been awesome. And thank you again to @gilbec7765 and @choobi_doodles for the artwork.

“Mind explaining what the hell that was?”  Nappa grumbled discreetly by his ear as Radditz stood farther away, trying to be unnoticeable about fiddling with his tie again.

“What do you mean?”  Vegeta kept his eyes further along the gangway to another closed door beyond that of the conference room.  This one with a frosted glass window taking up its upper half.  Frosted glass emblazoned with the simple moniker:  Management.  He knew she was in there.  She had to be in there.

“You fucking purred at her.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You purred at her and—”

“Shut up, Nappa.”  Vegeta seethed.  It was only Nappa’s extreme familiarity with Vegeta, mentoring him since he was six-years old, practically raising him, that he was able to hear the change in Vegeta’s voice.  He shouldn’t have been able to.  There shouldn’t have been anything for his mentor to hear or see.

Damn it!  Nobody got to him.  No one.  Especially not some, some… Woman.

“Go wait in the car.”  He growled.

“What?”

“Go wait in the car with Radditz and tell him if his tie is in anyway less then its best, I will hurt him.  Do you understand me or do I have to make it an order?”

“No, Sir.”  Although Nappa certainly didn’t feel like this was his Colonel’s best idea.  There was something about that woman that had gotten him all riled up.  For the life of him, the older man couldn’t understand why.  It’s not like Vegeta hadn’t seen a pretty girl before or talked to one.  What was so special about this one?  But he backed away then turned and tugged on Radditz’s sleeve.  “Come along.”

As they began walking back up the gangway to the stairs they’d taken to get up here, Nappa glanced back over his shoulder and saw Vegeta heading down the gangway to another door.

*                      *                      *

Vegeta heard the footsteps of his men begin to grow distant behind him as he glared at the far door.  He gritted his teeth.  Whatever this was, whatever was going on with him… around _her_ , he was getting to the bottom of it.  Come Hell or high water.  He stormed towards the door.

But just as quickly as his warpath began, it slowed…  The door was open just a crack.  Not enough to be seen from any distance really, but when you were close you could see the sliver of golden light from within and hear voices.  Raised voices.

Quietly, he stepped up to the crack in the door.  He saw the Woman sitting on the edge of a long table covered in papers and tools.  She was looking down at the floor.  The sag of her shoulders told him she was tired, but the underlying sense of rigidity to her told him another thing; there was an element of sadness to her.

Suddenly there was a hand gesture flailing into his view and that idiot man, Yamcha, stepped into view.  His height giving him the sense of standing over her.  Lording over her.  Vegeta’s eyes narrowed; he didn’t like that, he didn’t like that at all.

“I can’t believe you did that, Bulma.  Do you have any idea how that made me look to all those financiers out there?  How that made me look to the military?!”

_Not any bigger of an idiot than you did when you actually opened your mouth_ , Vegeta thought.

The Woman sighed, “And do _you_ have any idea how what _you_ did made _me_ look to those the military?”  She lifted her head and looked at Yamcha.  “I have had to deal with those stuffy old bastards since my father announced that I was going to run the company when he retired.  They’re easy to handle, a piece of cake to deal with.  They take one look at me and think I’m some stupid little girl playing with her daddy’s money.  Aw, aren’t I cute?”  Her eyes narrowed, “But they soon learned that I am my father’s daughter.  They learned that it was them who were playing with my father’s money and that stopped quickly.  I put them on an allowance.  If they want more, then they work for it.  Just like my father did with me, just like I did with myself.

“This is _my_ company, Yamcha, not yours.  Mine!  And you tried to block me from my own business.  You let those imbeciles manipulate you and you tried to keep me from my own business meeting.”

“Aww, c’mon, Babe.  It wasn’t like that.”

She stood up and the snap of her rise made the man cower away from her.  Vegeta smiled approvingly.

“Yes.  It.  Was.  You even told me _to my face_ that I wasn’t in any condition to run this meeting.”

Yamcha had the gall to scoff at her, roll his eyes, “I only meant that you know, you…”  He was searching for words for a moment then, “You know, you were tired.  You had a late-night last night.  You weren’t rested enough for such a big meeting like that.  There, you see.  I was doing you a favor, Babe.”  He crossed his arms over his chest, puffing it out again and leveling her with a beaming smile.  Clearly proud of himself.  Vegeta’s eyes flitted to the Woman’s face, which told him that the oaf was also clearly delusional.

“Bullshit.”

“Bulma!”

“It is, Yamcha!  I’ve stayed awake working all night before and done meetings just like that just fine.  You just lied to my face and worse yet, you’re proud of yourself for coming up with such lame crap.  As if I would believe that.  Let alone accept it.”

“Bulma, see, you’re clearly exhausted.  You need to get some rest.  How about you and I, we get out of here, get some dinner, go back to my place,” the idiot purred at her; Vegeta bared his teeth, was that idiot actually purring at her?  “We could have nice long _rest_ together.  Like we used to.  Before the war.”  He stepped towards her.

But her expression and glare were still blistering ice cold, “Like you had with Becky last night.”

Yamcha’s eyes widened.  Unnatural stuttering sounds of shock tumbled out of his gaping mouth.

“Y-y-y-you… _know_ … about… that?”

She nodded, “My dear friend Becky has a big mouth.  Of course, according to her, you know that now from _personal experience_.”

“Babe—”

“Don’t you ‘Babe’ me, you jerk.  I got to hear about what you’ve been doing. No, _who_ you’ve been doing behind my back while I’ve been busting my ass running a company.”

“B-b-b-“

“No!”

Silence hung between them.

So that was it.  They were lovers.  Vegeta felt some of his… whatever was wrong with him when it came to this Woman ebb from him.  She was taken; granted he thought the relationship was total crap from what he was seeing and hearing of it, but still, she was taken.  He took a step back from the door.

Then she sighed.

Vegeta paused and returned his gaze to her once again.

“Look, Yamcha,” she sat back down on the edge of the table, “We both know things haven’t been working well between us for a while.  I’m your fiancé, but…  Today showed me a lot about what you think a marriage between us would be like, how it would play out.  And no one is locking me out of my own company.  Even if we were married, Yamcha, you would never run or have any say in the running of Capsule Corp.  Period.”

Vegeta eyes darted to the other man.

Yamcha was stunned…  He thought… they were a team…  He closed his mouth as he stared at her, “’If’?  So, it’s ‘if’ we get married now?”

“No, no, it’s not ‘if’ we get married.”

Yamcha breathed a sigh of relief.

“We aren’t getting married at all.  We’re over, Yamcha.  Done.  For good this time.”

“Babe, Bulma, honey, you’re calling off our engagement?”

“And our relationship.”

He sighed, “Over a stupid business meeting?”

“How you behaved towards me before that meeting, at the door to that meeting, and… I know about the other women.”

He gulped.  “Babe, you said it yourself, we’ve…  It’s been really rough between us lately.  So, I…”

“The first time we broke up was because I found out that you were taking other girls out.  After we got back together, we broke up again because I found out you were taking out other girls.  Then we got back together and broke up again because I found out you started seeing other women.  Then again.  And again.  And again.  This… we’ve been broken from the start, Yamcha.  I’m just finally calling it.  No more this time.  No more ‘again’s.  Not after this.”

Silence again.

Vegeta remained.  His breathed held in his chest.  He didn’t know why.  He didn’t know why he hadn’t walked away yet.  Why he was still watching this, listening to the end of an engagement, to the end of a relationship that sounded like it had been going on for years.  This was so…

“So…”

His eyes went back to Yamcha.

“This is your choice then.  You’re ending a relationship we’ve shared for twelve years over a business meeting.”

Bulma looked up at him.  Her head tilted to the side and her face asking him ‘Really?  That’s what you got out of what I just old you?’

“Fine.  If that’s what you want to think, then yes.”

“What I think?”  His tone grew sharp.

Muscles prickled along Vegeta’s neck and shoulders, tightening.

“You don’t want to know what _I_ think, Bulma,” he threatened.

She sighed again, clearly done with this conversation for all the good it was doing her to continue.  She stood up and turned to face her table, she began picking up papers and looking them over.  Returning to work.  “You will retain your position in the company as Head of Security.  My father appointed you to it for a reason, it was a sound one, and I see no reason to go against it even though our relationship no longer exists.”

“Bulma,” he pleaded softly.

“Feel free to return to your obligations, Mister Yamcha.”

“Bulma.”  He said more sternly.

But she ignored him and continued to work.

After a few moments, he sighed and turned towards the door.  Vegeta quickly backed away, turned, and headed down the gangway, following after his subordinates.


	3. At Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vegeta's men, Major Nappa and Lieutenant Radditz Son, tease him about his being uncharacteristically distracted. Not able to tolerate this, Vegeta decides to confront his ‘problem’ head-on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again thank you to @Froglady15 for being my beta for this event. You're awesome! And thanks to my artists as well, @gilbec7796 and @choobi_doodles!

When they sat down at the table, Radditz heaved a big sigh of relief and massaged the front of his throat again.  As soon as they’d gotten back to their barracks, he’d asked Vegeta for permission to change clothes.  The Colonel granted it, to be honest, just to get the wild-haired annoyance to stop bothering him.  If giving him permission to get back into his fatigues got him to leave his God damn throat alone…

“For God’s sake, if you touch your throat again…”

“Yes, yes, I know, Sir.”  He leaned back in his chair with a big sigh of rest and relaxation… and the imminent prospect of drinks.  He glanced around the room, Ooh and pretty women too.  Perhaps their stay in West City wouldn’t end up being such a drag after all. 

They all thought it would be.  A drag.  West City was about as far from the frontlines as they could be while still actually being in the War.  That never sat well with Saiyans.  Especially when their age-old enemies the Colds were in the fight.  They were the main force of the Nazi war machine just as the Saiyans were for the Allies.  France was where the action was, but for some reason they had been restricted far from that area of battle.  No, they’d been relegated to the urban hustle and bustle of West City.  Like London, it had targets set on it.  If France fell, both London and West City would be next.  Twin targets.  Normally something like that would spread a military far too thin, but if France was brought under heel, then the Axis armies would be bolstered.  Expanded.  An even bigger threat than ever.  An unstoppable threat.  And thus, the weapons factories and anything else pertaining to military supremacy was of the utmost importance.  It still didn’t make any sense to Radditz that they were sent here to check up and monitor this Capsule Corporation and their government contract firsthand.  They’d come here, bypassed the frontlines, for what?  Some stupid train that hauled more shit than any other train?  Some stupid balloon thing that the Nazis and the Colds were working on too?  This… A blonde girl passed by.  All buxom gold curls and buxom everything else.  Despite himself, Radditz licked his lips at her fleeting rear end… was not going to be a stupid stop at all.

Vegeta rolled his eyes at his subordinate’s behavior, “Tch.”  God, if he was this way already, then Radditz wasn’t going to last the rest of their stay here.  He was going to kill him himself, never mind letting the Nazis or the Colds getting a crack at him.  “Nappa, order drinks.”

One glance at his Colonel and the Major knew from decades spent at the younger man’s side that if he didn’t distract Lieutenant Radditz Son’s horndog tendencies right now, Vegeta was liable to dive over the table and throttle the young man.  Nappa turned to the right, there was the waitress that Radditz was panting after; best to try and avoid that lest Raddtiz’s hormones hit overdrive.

Nappa turned to the left, there were two other waiters and another waitress, but they were serving large drink orders or taking orders from much larger groups than theirs.  Oh God, he rolled his eyes to the heavens, Vegeta wasn’t going to like this.  Nappa turned back to the right, raised his hand, and whistled at the approaching shapely figure.

She had a scowl that could melt paint off a wall, but other than that she walked over to them without any hesitation.  She put her hands on her hips like she was packing a fully loaded rifle and was more than willing and capable of using it.  Nappa wanted to smack himself in the face and hang his hand in shame.  That was sure to turn Radditz on even more and piss Vegeta off even more.  He just couldn’t catch a break to day between Radditz’s dick and Vegeta’s rage.  Well, _Shit_.  “Three beers.”  He said.  For the love of God, “Just three beers.”

“Okay, whatever.”

She stalked back off to the bar to get their bottles and Radditz nearly contorted himself to keep drooling after the sway of her hips in that tight, red, short skirt.  Nappa just waited.  Feeling the heat radiating off Vegeta like an aura of electricity.  Sure enough, the woman turned back towards them with a platter of three beers between her hands and Radditz’s eyes glued to her large breasts threatening to spill out of her tight, pink top.  The playful red hairband didn’t help either.  Jesus Christ, Vegeta was going to kill this man.

She sidled right up between Vegeta and Radditz, not really paying attention to either and leaning over to deposit each beer bottle on their table.

“You payin’ now, later, or runnin’ a tab to charge to the base?”

“Charge the base,” Vegeta ordered.

“Fine,” she turned and began to walk away.

Radditz grabbed his drink and followed her back to the bar.  Instantly he was trying to chat her up.  She still ignoring him, but he wasn’t exactly being deterred either.  Even Nappa wasn’t sure whether or not Radditz realized she wasn’t interested in him and he was trying to wear her down or if he genuinely thought he was getting somewhere with her.

“Have my beer.  I’m leaving.”  Vegeta was glaring daggers at Radditz.  He stood up with a snap that nearly sent his chair flying back.

Nappa began to rise, but, “Never mind that.  Just make sure that dumbass makes it back to the barracks on time or I will run him into the ground tomorrow morning at dawn.”

“Yes, Sir.”  Nappa nodded curtly as he retook his seat.

He drew Vegeta’s bottle closer as the Colonel gave the Lieutenant one last look of disgust before turning on his heels and stomping for the door.  He left with a slam of the door that no one seemed to notice nor even hint at caring about.

Well, Nappa popped the lid off one of his bottles and watched young Radditz try to score with a woman that seemed less than less than enthusiastic about him even trying.  He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long swig.  This should be fun to watch.

*                      *                      *

Animals.  Little more than animals.  And idiots.  Both the Son sons were daft morons, the only difference between them was that one couldn’t keep it in his pants and the other was too much a virgin to even figure his dick out.  For fuck’s sake, must he be surrounded by horny idiots.  At least Nappa had the good sense to not be so, so… _teenager_ about it.  They were all three grown ass men.  Why was that so difficult for Radditz to understand?  Vegeta stomped back to their jeep.  The two drunks could find their… Wait, what was that?  His eyes narrowed.

Down the street was the front of Capsule Corporation’s main building and he swore…  He quickly forgot about the jeep.  Probably for the better, it would be best for him to walk off his anger.  But… he walked along the sidewalk, traveling further up the road, in the opposite direction of their base and barracks.

He kept his eyes trained on the third floor… fourth window on the far right…  Yes, there.  A light was on.  What the Hell was a light doing on in there?!  He gritted his teeth.  Good, he wanted to exercise some of his rage with a good throttling of some dumbass saboteur who thought no one would notice a window lit up in an empty factory.

Vegeta picked up his pace, face set for battle.  Until he saw the two guards stationed on either side of the factory’s main entrance.  They snapped to attention once they’d noticed him.  He slowly walked up to the door.  Stared at the entrance.  Then stared up at the lit window.  Then over at the guard on his left.

“Who’s inside this facility after regular hours of operation?”

*                      *                      *

The rub of her eraser was as relaxing to her as a soak in a nice hot bath in a tub as big as a car.  In the golden light of a couple of the lamps she had station around her office, she could work her imaginations just enough to pretend that their glows were that of candles surrounding said tub.  All she needed now was a magnum of champagne and a flute to drink it from and maybe some…  “Oooohhhh, mmmm,” she licked her lips.  Strawberries!  Yes, strawberries would be perfect.  Strawberries dipped in Belgium chocolate.  That would be perfect.

Bulma Briefs blew the rolled tiny bits of rubbed off eraser from the diagram she was working on.  Wiping off the rest with the side of her hand.  She blew again as she did so for good measure.  She used to do that, she thought as she looked down at the design she was working on.  Long, luxuriant soaks in hot baths while drinking champagne and eating chocolate-covered strawberries.  It was her favorite Friday night thing.  She stayed in her suite at the hotel her family owned, where she had a private floor all to herself, and she would luxuriate exactly like that.  It was her and silence.  No one would be around.  Even Yamcha was banned.

She frowned.  Maybe that was one of the reasons he strayed.  How he was able to do it so often.  She tilted her head as she gazed down at the schematic without seeing it.  It was hard to believe that one night of private ease and sanctuary away from all the tumult would be bothersome enough to step out on their relationship.  A twelve-year relationship.    One night spent away from each other didn’t result in…  Her frowned deepened.  Well… it could lead to infidelity.  In a way.  It would result in him going out with his guy friends more often and usually the ones most available to hang out with were his single friends.  They liked to frequent bars and there were other women at bars.  Yamcha didn’t hold his liquor very well, not even light weight booze like your average beer let alone any hard stuff if they were doing shots or anything.  It wouldn’t take much imbibing then to influence his behavior to overstep the bounds of their relationship.  If his buddies were egging him on… then, yes, one night of peace and quiet away from each other could result in infidelity.  _Could_ though…

She tapped the end of her pencil against her lips.  There was always the option to say ‘No’.  There was always the option to just not cheat on her.  Drinking may have explained the first time, but what about all the rest.  He couldn’t claim that he was boozed up all the time every time.  No, at least one was done completely sober and with his wholehearted involvement.  The laws of statistics supported that.  And… the problem with Yamcha… her eyes closed for a moment.

There.  There it was.  She thought Yamcha had a problem.  Not that she required her boyfriends to be perfect, but she thought that he had drawbacks to his personality.  She bowed her head.  Which meant he thought she had drawbacks too.  Severe ones apparently because why else would he try and oust her from her own business meeting and go on and on later in this very room about how she wasn’t up to the task of it.  Quite simply put, he thought she was in over her head here running her father’s company.  Her eyes opened, focusing on the schematic in front of her.  In truth, she had been groomed from this since her elder sister proved to be more interested in reading romance novels and writing them than in science while Bulma reveled in it like a pig in mud.  From that moment on, the company was going to be left to her.  Her father took her with him every day to this very same factory.  Had her sitting in on every meeting.  He explained everything about this place to her.  Showed her everything he could…  And then there were things he hadn’t taught her and she still didn’t know about.  The things she’d learned the hard way.  Things like how everyone really felt about the boss’s daughter when he wasn’t around and they thought she wasn’t either.  How some of her father’s oldest friends, the men in the suits from early today, resented taking orders from a woman let alone a much younger woman.  How there were times when she hid herself away in janitors’ closets or in here under her father’s desk so she would be out of sight and quietly sobbed to herself.  In truth, Yamcha didn’t know what he was talking about.  She had been prepared for all of this in more ways than he could ever know.

To her, his problem was that he never did anything by halves and once he did something, he kept doing it.  The halves thing at one time had been bliss.  Romantic dinners.  Even more romantic evenings.  But after awhile it got old and it got boring.  He never appreciated something as simple as a sweet kiss good night with a night spent in each other’s arms.  And if she wanted that, he’d whine about how boring that was.  Eventually it got to the point where he was the one having a great time and she was the one putting on a demurely smiling façade and thinking about new engine designs and anything else to do with work.  It ended up being that way in the bedroom too.  Yamcha would finish, Bulma would roll out of bed, trudge over to her office in her suite, and work.  She’d gotten used to the nights spent sexually unsatisfied to the point of… well, she didn’t expect be gratified anymore.  She didn’t even finish herself afterward anymore in secret.  She just… sex was… she didn’t remember anymore what an orgasm felt like.  It was like a pipedream to her now.  Something that sounded as absolutely wonderful and fictional as those her sister wrote about in her rather successful line of Romance novels.

Bulma sighed and bent over her plans again.  This was better.  It was even more obvious to her now that she and Yamcha were a disaster for each other.  There were drawbacks in each other that the other just couldn’t get over and couldn’t help but think of when they thought of each other.  There was always going to be some point where those opinions would show up like they did today.  And he’d end up thinking of her in those moments as some sort of monster harpy yelling at him because she was in over her head and lashing out because of that.  And she’d end up thinking of him as some sort of little worm better suited to doing her bidding than satisfying her in any meaningful way.  No, it was better this way.  He could go his way, she could go hers, they would never really meet again in between.

Okay, so the math on the aerodynamics was still not working.  Somewhere in here something was off.  She tapped the eraser against her lips again with a sigh as her eyes peered at every line.  Studying.  Analyzing.

He stood at the opened doorway.  Watching her.  He’d been watching her ever since she’d moaned and mmm-ed.  The sound of it had frozen his steps and had his body tingling in a way.  Gods, his pants went from fitting just fine to tight as fuck in seconds.  He wanted her to make that sound again and he’d prefer if she did that while securely underneath him with her legs wrapped around his waist and his hips working her sound after loud vulgar sound out of her mouth.  He had to take the time to compose himself lest he embarrass himself.  So he took to staring at her face and shoulders.  Analyzing her.  She seemed… worried about something.  At first, he thought it was about whatever those blueprints she was working on were of, but as he watched, saw the distant look in her eyes even from here, he knew that it was something else.

He got the sinking suspicion that she was rehashing her earlier breakup in her mind.  Rethinking every moment of it.  Probably wondering if she’d made the right decision getting rid of that oaf…  Perhaps wondering if she should take him back.  For some reason the very thought of that set his teeth on edge and his mind and body on fire.  What the Hell was wrong with him?  For God’s sake, he was acting like an animal in mating season.  Getting territorial over a potentially viable female.  Thinking of all the ways he wanted to mate with her.  Shit.  Was he… Vegeta looked down at the floor, was he that lonely?  It had been years, actual years, since he had been with a woman and even then it had been a…  He hadn’t been dumb enough to screw a hooker, but it had still been a cheap fling.  He’d gone out with Nappa and Radditz and in a moment of weakness, aboso-friggin’-lutely _drunken_ weakness, he’d stupidly gotten into some sort of fucking competition with his young, new Lieutenant.  Literally, a fucking competition.  Who could chat up a chick at the bar and fuck her quickest.  Nappa would time it.  Radditz had schmoozed his way into the hearts of three women, doing so so seamlessly and easily that, well, he’d easily won that part of the competition.  Vegeta didn’t… converse well with the other sex… he didn’t converse well with either gender easily, _especially_ about sex.  But, Vegeta gritted his teeth at the memory as he stared down at the floor in front of his feet.  One of the barmaids had taken pity on him.  Had seen how awkward he was, how _shy_ he was around women like that.  And she took pity on him.  Pity!  But pity had worked.  He ended up back at the barracks with her before Radditz had with either of his women.  Clothes removal had been awkward and she had taken control of the situation he thought out of consideration for his extreme shyness back at the bar.  As soon as she’d gotten him on the bed though, he found out that that couldn’t have been farther from the truth.  This was about her.  This was all about her.  Not even a hint about him.  She’d refused to kiss, refused his kisses.  Averting her head at each attempt until he just stopped trying.  She had him lay back.  He’d obeyed thinking that… well, he hadn’t known what to think other than he didn’t want to lose to Radditz of all people.  She gave his limp member a few strokes to get him semi-hard for the condom, he’d slipped it on, then she climbed on top of him, slipped him inside her, and rode him.  When he reached for her, she slapped his hands away… and she wouldn’t touch him either.  Eventually he stopped reaching for her… and stopped trying to get her to reach for him.  He folded his arms behind his head and watched her bouncing on his cock.  He couldn’t describe how flaccid he got inside her even as she rode him.  She kept her eyes closed, screeched like a cat in heat, and kept running her hands through her own hair or groping her own ample breasts.  She was in it for herself.  She’d wanted a handy penis for a quick bout of self-gratification rather than whatever else she had been using for that in the interim and Vegeta had been desperate, shy, and gullible enough to fit the bill.  He couldn’t wait for her to get done.  Couldn’t wait for it to be over.

He was just nodding off to sleep when he’d felt her beginning to clench around him.  She quickly lifted herself off of him and rubbed herself to screaming fruition while his sheathed cock flopped on his stomach, slick with her juices rather than mixed with any of his own.  His thought had been _Great, now I’m going to have to take a shower or spend the rest of the night reeking of her_.  As soon as she came down off her organic high, he’d flung her off of him.  He hadn’t given her time to complain as he picked up her clothes, flung them at her, and told her to get dressed and get the fuck out as he’d grabbed a towel and went to the showers to clean her off him and effectively rid himself of the whole humiliating experience.

He looked up, his eyes rising to take in the figure bent over the table.  He watched the eraser end of her pencil tap against her soft, full, pink lips over and over.  Then her hips started swaying, moving her ample, curvy behind slowly from side to side.  Despite himself, his hand immediately went to his unseemly, hardening cock.  Grabbing his growing bulge as if that could stop it from threatening the density of his clothes.  He licked his lips.  Fuck, she was a sight to behold.  Shit.

_Get yourself together, Vegeta!  Why the Hell did you come here?!_

_To confront her._

_Then why aren’t you doing that?!_

_I’m trying to but she’s so fucking hot!_

_So was that barmaid and look at how that turned out for you!_

Vegeta eased his literal grip on himself as he felt his body react to the memory once more.  To the humiliation.  To how filthy and unsatisfied he’d felt under the searing hot water of the shower afterward.  His body melted under the heat of his memory.  A pretty face had humiliated and shamed him once before.  He was damned if he was going to let it happen again.

He stepped across the threshold.


	4. The Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vegeta decides to confront his ‘problem’ head-on. Instead, he discovers the woman’s most precious and impressive project: the first combat worthy jet fighter. But it doesn’t quite work yet. The pilot in Vegeta can’t resist the plane and the man in him can’t seem to resist the woman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, a big thank you to my beta Froglady15 and my artists, @gilbec7796 and @choobi_doodles.
> 
> And this is the debut of the title creation, the Z Fighter. The Z Fighter is based on the first Allied combat worthy jet fighter, the British Gloster Meteor. It's nickname was the War Thunder. Hence, the title of this fic.

She heard the footsteps on the wood floor near the door behind her and sighed heavily.  Yep, he didn’t do things half-ass.  That was his biggest problem.  Not dates and most certainly not breakups.  She pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers, closed her eyes to try and find the strength to… well, to not kill him where he stood or some other thing he’d deem as incredibly emasculating and she thought of as talking to him as equals… which apparently was the incredibly emasculating part.  Bulma sighed again and turned around to face her door.

“Yamcha,” she began then opened her eyes, “Oh.”

That incredibly, just drop-dead hunky, Colonel guy was back.  Her brows furrowed, _Why?_

“Um, can I help you with something?  Did you forget something in the conference room?”  She hadn’t seen anything in there or at least nothing had jumped out at her as a forgotten item.  Although, come to think of it, she hadn’t really looked; she’d had other things on her mind at the time.  Like confronting Yamcha about his behavior at the meeting…  And finally breaking up with him for good this time.  No going back.

“No.”

God, his voice was just as alluring as it had been during the meeting.  It was like gravel wrapped in velvet if that was even a thing and its timbre went straight to her core.  It had been so long since… her and Yamcha hadn’t been intimate together or even touched each other for… her eyes widened, _years!_   They hadn’t had any intimate contact in years!  Not since she’d found out about his second assignation.  After she’d caught him with the first, he’d asked for forgiveness and she’d given it thinking his stepping out on her was just some drunken mistake, but when he’d done it again, she couldn’t trust him anymore.  Couldn’t trust his body.  If he had caught something, would he tell her?  Would he even bother to go to a doctor and get checked?

“I…,” _why had her face changed like that?_   “I saw the light from your lamps when I was passing by outside.  I believed the rest of the factory to be”

“Oh, ohh, I see.  Yeah, I… have a tendency to work late.  No worries.”

But he didn’t leave.  He stepped forward.  Coming further into her office/private ‘lab’, of sorts.  She had a real workplace like an actual lab since before the war.  That was years ago and more at their house in the country than here.

“What do have to be working on so late?”  He asked, glancing around the dingy confines she called her workspace.  The shelves were industrial and crammed full of small crates filled with an assortment of equally small parts of all varieties and uses and books and other references.  There were notebooks he spied that had loose papers stuffed awkwardly between its pages; most likely her notes, plenty of them.  Vegeta’s eyes narrowed at the thickness of the notebooks, “It was my understanding that we were presented with the final product of the train and your dirigible this afternoon.”  _Did she really have that many ideas?_

“Yeah, well,” she turned back to the schematics covered in eraser marks and pencil marks and doddles of random algorithms, equations, and measurements along its edges laid out on the table before her, “There’s always room for improvement.”

His eyes returned to her back.  That was something he always believed.  It was why even after decades long past his academy physical training, he continued to train himself nearly to death.  There was always room for improvement.  Because the enemy was continuously changing as time and the world changed.  There was no such thing as ‘peacetime’; it was merely a lull between engagements in which both sides grew and evolved to take each other on again.  The faces, the governments, the technology may change, but the battles, the war stayed the same.  And he would win every time.  Vegeta Saiyan refused to fail.  Ever.

Again, he took steps further into the room.  His face set at the back of her head.  He never failed.

Vegeta walked up to the woman and took up position beside her.  Right beside her as close as he could get without being inappropriate.  His eyes turned downward to the blue papers she’d been pouring over… slowly he reached down and picked up the elongated sheet.  He gazed down at the blue sheet between his fingers with a mixture of shock and awe.

“You’re building a…”  His eyes widened slightly, both from being utterly impressed and joy sending his heart into his throat.  “ _A jet fighter_.”

He heard rumors that some engineers were working on this.  Mostly in response to rumors about the Germans working on this exact same thing.  It wasn’t that neither side had craft in the air.  It was about the race for aerial supremacy.  Vegeta was a flyer.  Had started out as a member of his country’s air force but had been transferred to the army against his will.  In truth, his soul was that of a warrior always in the fight, but his heart belonged in the air to do that.  And here, here in this dingy little shack of an office stuck up on the wall of one of the levels of a massive, grubby factory were the plans to something that set his soul on fire.

Bulma shrugged as she scrutinized the sheet underneath the one the Colonel had picked up.  “Yeah, well, it’s trying to be one.”  She screwed up her eyes; there was something she was missing.  But what!  Every line seemed to be in pla—Wait… was that it?!  Every line seemed to be in place, but what if there were lines that were supposed to be in place as well and she hadn’t drawn them on yet!  Was that it?  Was she missing something because it wasn’t there yet?  Maybe.  Just… maybe.

Bulma suddenly bent over the revealed sheet of plan.  Shoving the other out of the way.  If the Colonel wanted to check it, then alright so long as he didn’t get in her way.  Her eyes zeroed in on the top schematic.  She traced the pencil nib in the air over her drawing.  Literally retracing her steps.  Every step of the way she analyzed the area.  No matter how small the spot to see if something was supposed to attach there.  Was something missing there?  Anything?

Vegeta’s eyes were riveted to the image.  The ship was sleek and streamlined.  It’d fly like a beauty.  Probably like a red-hot knife through frozen butter.  Just smooth and easy gliding that barely shifted clouds or windstream.  As though he were lying on his stomach with his arms by his sides and the force of the wind blowing by him was nothing at all.  The turbines were even designed to add to the aerodynamics of it rather than possibly hinder as some of the test models did now.  He glanced up at the blueprints’ header and saw:  **Project Kame, Model Z Jet Fighter**.  So that was it, the Z-Fighter.  Amazing, his eyes returned to the image, simply amazing.  Then his glance shifted to her back hunched over the table beside him, he frowned.

“Why didn’t you show us this at the meeting earlier?  Why the blimp?”

“Because the blimp will work, but this… there’s something not quite right here.  So, I wouldn’t present you with something that wasn’t viable.”  She said more to herself than him, he felt, as the pencil in her hand traced over the lines of the other sheets of blueprints.

He watched her.  Her lips moving, saying words that were going unheard, as her eyes zeroed in on every segment of line the same way his did when he was lining up a target in his sights and preparing to fire.  He looked at the diagram under her scrutiny… then the one in his own hand.  She was right.  Going by the math, there was something off.  Not a lot.  She really was very close, but something just wasn’t adding up and it was a chain reaction.  One thing, tiny, but it affected everything else.  That was both good and bad.  It meant that truly only one thing needed to be fixed and everything else would fall into place.  Bad was that it was currently a thing so damn tiny it was proving elusive, Vegeta’s eyes returned to the Woman beside him, to her.  Perhaps not to him.

Vegeta set down the blueprint, turned, and stepped away from her.

Bulma heard and felt the Colonel walk away.  She hoped he wouldn’t consider it rude of her if she didn’t say good-bye to him or walk him out or anything, but she was otherwise engaged—She heard rustling behind her.  Bulma bolted upright and spun around.  She nearly dropped her pencil.  At first, she thought he was mucking around in her files and was about to tell his military ass off, but he wasn’t rummaging through her stuff, he was taking his coat off and setting it down on one of her spare guest chairs; his hat was already sitting nice and neatly on the chair’s seat.  And she thought he looked delectable with the damn coat on.  All it had apparently been doing was covering up a body so fit it put the mythical Adonis to shame.  Bulma trembled, her hand behind her clutched the edge of the table.  She subtly shifted her knees to close together.  The shirt was expertly tailored to his incredible physique.  It was loose enough for him to move without the slightest hindrance, but tight enough to show every ripple of sinew and muscle beneath.  _Holy fuck._   She felt warmth and dampness between her legs…  _Holy Fuck!  Am I getting wet?!  Am I really standing her getting wet just looking at this guy?!_   Then he began to unbutton his cuff and roll his sleeve up above his elbow.  Effectively showing off just how much muscle and sinew could ripple sensuously beneath caramel-colored skin.

She abruptly turned away as she felt herself shudder, core first.  _Fuck, fuck, fuck!_   God, it had been so long since she’d been touched or even seen a man this naked and shit, was it a welcomed sight.  But not right now.  And not this man.  What sort of reputation would she get if she were caught jumping the bones… she licked her lips as her eyes suddenly became hazy with the thought of a nice, thick erection; more sinew and muscle rippling beneath caramel-colored skin tipped with a juicy pink hea— _Jesus Christ!  Pull yourself together, Bulma! God damn!_

Bulma took a deep breath.  Trying desperately to send the thought of boners away from her mind and calm herself down.  She’d never been like this before.  Never.  God, being with Yamcha had really taken its toll, hadn’t it?  Bulma closed her eyes and sighed. The realization was stunning, she has been so unsatisfied in so many ways for so long that she was fantasizing about her clientele rather than working with them the way she was supposed to.  She opened her eyes and they immediately fell on the plans of her beloved Z-Fighter.  Her pride and joy.  Her work.  _This_ work had been where she found satisfaction rather than with the man she’d agreed to spend the rest of her life with…  Well, that wasn’t happening now.  She was free of the charade.  She still had her work, but now she could find that satisfaction and companionship someplace else.  Just not with her new customer/boss.  She wasn’t lying to herself about the reputation she’d get if it was ever out or even rumored that she was having sex even if just a strict fling with the Colonel overseeing her government contracts.  And what would her father have to say about it if any of that reached his ears?  Would he confront her about it?  She wouldn’t lie to him, she never did.  But would he strip her of control over the company and take over himself? How would that be explained to the public?  The famous Doctor Trunks Briefs coming out of retirement after how many years to retake control of Capsule Corporation from his youngest daughter with absolutely no explanation.  No one would take that, they’d dig.  And they’d find out that it was because said youngest daughter couldn’t keep her legs closed when it came to Colonel Hunky overseeing her.

She refrained from leaning over her plans but went back to analyzing them.  No, not the Colonel, some other man, but not him.  No matter what.  Not him.

Vegeta finished rolling up his sleeves just above his elbows.  He turned back to the table and the Woman.  It hadn’t escaped his peripheral vision that she’d suddenly turned to him when she heard him taking off his jacket.  And it hadn’t escaped his notice that she’d gripped the table edge and shut her knees together.  And it also hadn’t escaped his attention that she’d suddenly shivered and turned away from him.  One sniff, not even a deep one, and he could detect a very distinct musk in the dusty air.  His body reacted instantly and focusing intently was all he could do to not run over to her and make a move on her, let her know that he was game if she was.  That he was more than willing to hike her up on that table, sink himself in her to his hilt, and have all sorts of vulgar moans coming out of that clever mouth of hers if she wanted him to.  He couldn’t help the growing stiffness in his pants.  The salivating in his mouth.  His blood racing in his veins and ears.  The pounding of his heart against his ribcage.  But he kept his mind on the menial task of rolling up his sleeves and regulating his breathing so it wasn’t deep enough to let her rich scent soak into his body from the inside out.  Now, he was ready to not fail although he admitted to himself that this was getting tougher and tougher by the moment.  But he wasn’t going to be distracted.  He wasn’t going to let another woman humiliate him.

It was bad enough that he’d spent that horrible night scrubbing himself raw to free himself of any trace of that slag of a female, but then he’d spent the rest of the night and morning exercising himself into oblivion after demanding a whole new mattress and bed linens and leaving orders to burn the old ones.  Excessive yes, but… he didn’t think he could stand smelling her everywhere he turned in his private, personal space.  When he’d showered again after his morning workout, Radditz greeted him in front of Nappa by slapping the money from the wager into his hand.  Vegeta threw it back down on Radditz’s cot and told the Lieutenant that he could keep it with a blatant sneer of disgust.  He could tell that from Radditz’s face that he wanted to ask why, but he also knew Nappa had sent some sort of covert signal to the fellow Saiyan to definitely _not_ pursue this any further.  Life had returned to normal.  He’d be damned if he was going to let another woman disrupt his life and create another gossipy distraction that his most immediate subordinates might be discussing behind his back.

He approached and saw the muscles of her elegant shoulders tense ever so slightly.  She was bracing herself as was he.  He set his jaw and stepped up beside her.  Despite his resilience, he stole a side-eye glance at her.  Her attention was indeed on her plans and finding the problem contained elusively therein, but he also noted as slight amount of melancholy to her features.  He looked down at blueprints again, allowing her the dignity of her feelings being kept discreet.  But he knew that look.  That look of everyone else having a ‘normal’ life and her not.  The look of being on the inside looking out.  Gilded cages.  Loneliness.  The expression of looking towards her work for release and freedom in the way he looked to a P.T. field or a plane for exactly the same thing.  Or at least that was what that look on him meant…

“The flaps.”

“What,” she looked over at him, taking the pencil away from her lips.

“The flaps,” he repeated, gesturing at top sheet of schematic, “Most jets have those on the wings.”

She looked again, squinting, “I know, I know, but I needed to put the turbines midwing so the flaps had to move.  I put them here.  On the dorsal fin.”

“Dorsal fins?”  He snorted.  “It’s not a fish.”

“Well, how in the Hell was I supposed to know what they’re technically called?”  She nudged him playfully.

He could tell instantly that she hadn’t meant to do that, force of habit it would seem.  But he smiled all the same, smirked actually, and took the playfulness.  His stomach clenching and fluttering at her touch.  He moved them quickly on.  He needed to get through this, he needed to know he could get through this.

“It’s called a rudder.”

“Oh, I thought that’s what the flap on it was called.”

“No,” he felt his cheeks warming with his smirk threatening to break into a smile, “the whole thing is called a rudder.  And that part of the whole plane is called the empennage.”

She nodded, listening, taking in what he told her, learning.  He enjoyed the sight.  Then she shrugged, “Anyways, you need the flaps for turning and shifting the air currents for effective movements.  Judging by how sharply you flare them, your movements can potentially become sharper.  That’s why I put them on the _rudder_ ,” she pointed for amateur dramatics, his smirked deepened, “as horizontal stabilizing control surfaces along with the rudder’s vertical stabilizing control surfaces.”

He thought it through.  Ran the simulation of it in his mind.  He nodded.  She stared at him then a brilliant smile broke out on her lips.  He must have caught it out of the corner of his eye because he suddenly looked really uncomfortable.  She looked away to give him the dignity of her discretion.  No need to point out that she’d noticed anything at all.  But she got what he was doing.  He was coming at the problem from a different angle than she.  He was going by the parts themselves and their usefulness in the design.

“True.  Okay, so keep those there.”  He finally said.

“But is there anything else you’re noticing about the… _empennage_.”  She tried out the word and he felt his stomach flutter again.  And his manhood stir in his pants.

This was going to be difficult if he kept finding her learning to be cute and attractive.  He needed another distraction.  He bent over the table, getting closer to the schematics.  She leaned down beside him just as close as she could be.  Watching his finger point to each component and waiting for his every word.  Yep, this was going to be torture enduring her learning curve and her other curves, a pair of which he was struggling not to sneak a peek at even though he imagined they were pretty well propped up on the table underneath her.  Instead, he kept his focus on the plans she’d drawn up.  Where was it?  Where was the oddity… or perhaps she was missing a piece that needed to be in here somewhere?  _Hmmm_ …  They poured over the drawings as the clock on her wall ticked away.


	5. Training

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vegeta spends his day training himself and his men to exhaustion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to my beta @Froglady15 and my artists, @gilbec7796 and @choobi_doodles. Hope everyone is enjoying this story and Vegebulocracy's Mini Bang event overall.

As he laid his clothes out after his shower, he still couldn’t believe it.  How intuitive she was.  It was a credit to her skill and abilities as an engineer that she just _knew_ what was needed in a fighter craft even if she didn’t know the names of the parts or areas of the aircraft.  She just knew the shapes of the pieces instinctively.  Just looking at the spot on the schematic and sussing out what type of part was needed and in what shape for the utmost efficiency.  Each move, every choice trimming the weight off the craft.  Making the general infrastructure of it lighter and sleeker. Making room for better, heavier armaments.  Making it an agile, nimble thing with fangs and claws.  A superior aircraft to take on whatever the Nazis and the Colds unholy alliance could throw at them and dominate it.

It invigorated him.  Coming back to the barracks well into the morning.  God, he still couldn’t believe he’d spent the whole night with her going over those plans.  In fact, he hadn’t noticed until they’d noticed the happy chirruping of birds and look to see the sky pinking with dawn.  He’d hurried to slip his jacket back on and gather up his cap as she rolled the Z-Fighter’s plans back up and put them in a safe in a corner of the room.  Another unique change of pace was when she’d walked him down to the factory door and bid him farewell with a handshake.  He’d offered to walk her home, but she’d waved him off the notion and told him that since the factory itself would be opening in a matter of hours, she’d simply nap in her office until the start of business.  He’d nodded approvingly, he was _still_ nodding approvingly.  She was like him in a way.  He returned to the barracks on such a high he was so light-footed he nearly skipped a few times and he couldn’t keep the smile off his face.  He snuck in, stripped down to his skivvies, and slipped onto his cot for a similar nap.  But he couldn’t sleep.  Just laid there with his arms up and his hands under his head and staring at the ceiling with visions of jet fighter schematics dancing through his head.  He was like a child at Christmas.  After a handful of minutes, that seemed like forever, he hopped back up, gathered up his things, and headed for the showers.  He lathered and scrubbed with vim and vigor.  Occasionally laughing to himself.  A child at Christmas.

He finally took the towel from around his waist, tossed it on the cot, and slipped on the olive drab briefs.  He slipped on the rest of his fatigues as the first wave of his men began returning to the barracks, fresh from their own showers.  As the second wave entered, he left.  Heading for the mess hall, still grinning, still walking on clouds he hoped would soon be sliced by the wings of the Z-Fighter.

*                      *                      *

“What’s her name?”

“What?”

_Clank._

“What’s her name?”  Radditz asked, sitting down across from Vegeta after plopping his tray down on the table loudly.

“Who?”  Vegeta shoved a forkful of scrambled egg into his mouth, utterly baffled.

“The piece of tail you got last night that has you dancing all over the place and grinning like an idiot.”  Vegeta froze with another heaping forkful of egg on its way into his already opened mouth; the mirth on his face dying into a bitter scowl.  “What’s.  Her.  Name,” Radditz grinned.  Shoveling in his own fork of heaping egg.

That’s what they thought… wait, is that what they _all_ thought was going on with him?  That he’d fucked some random slut last night and was…

“Grrr,” Vegeta snarled at his Lieutenant.  “There is no woman, you fucking idiot.”

Radditz startled, “What?  You can’t be serious.  You’ve been… and you didn’t… last night.  Are you sure?”

Vegeta nearly threw his tray at him, “What do you mean am I sure?  Of course, I would know whether or not I fucked someone last night.”

“Then what’s got you so freakishly happy all of a sudden?”

He knew veins were popping out on his forehead.  His fists were trembling.  He wanted to kill.  He also knew he had to answer.  If he didn’t, gossip would answer for him and that could be… damaging, potentially debilitating for his command.

“I got word of a new project.”  He growled out.  In a bizarre way he felt like he was being robbed of his happiness about the Z-Fighter.  It wasn’t his baby, it was hers, but still after helping her figure out all last night that the problem was not in the rudder or the empennage whatsoever, he felt like he had some stake in the Z’s fate now.  Like she was its mother and at least he was an uncle with potential to step up to being its father.  All he knew was that he was going to say as little about it as possible.

“Really,” Radditz wagged his eyebrows at him suggestively.

“Tch,” Vegeta rolled his eyes and went back to his breakfast as Nappa finally sat down beside him.

“So what’s this new project that you’re so happy about?”

“Project?”  Nappa questioned.  “What project?”

“I got word that an allied company is working on a new aircraft.”

“God,” Radditz rolled his eyes and glumly jabbed his fork into his pile of scrambled eggs, “Really?  Some new stupid ass _plane_ is what’s got you so damn happy this morning?”

“What did you expect?”  Nappa piped up around a bite of toast.  “He used to be a pilot after all.  Our country’s best.  Of course he’d be excited about a new war plane.  Probably itching to get a chance to try it out.  And… our Vegeta taking up with some woman?  Please.”

Vegeta took a slow sip of coffee.  Allowing the lifted mug to conceal his face from Radditz and obscure it from Nappa.  Both men were two of his closest and oldest friends.  One like a brother to him despite the extreme difference in their ranks and the other, a mentor to him, again, despite the extreme difference in their ranks. They’d been through a lot together, quite a few battles in this war already.  They knew him better then perhaps anyone else in the world other than himself.  And yet… Nappa was covering for him.  It was obvious to Vegeta.  He’d mentioned noticing Vegeta’s absurd behavior in the meeting yesterday when it came to the Woman.  And just now, Radditz honestly thought that, that, that he had bedded the Woman last night and was prancing around like some goofy peacock about it…  Little did they know how close they were.  Last night, as soon as he’d stepped into her office, he’d wanted her.  Even now his mind lazily strayed to thoughts of them pouring over that table, side by side, then them pouring over that table while he took her over and over and she moaned vulgarly.  There was no denying that until they’d really gotten into hunting down this illusive flaw in her design that genuinely fucking her was what _had_ been on his mind.  Well, finding out who the hell was in this important factory when it was supposedly shut down was the first thing that had been on his mind _then_ when he found it was her working late on this fantastic new project, then fucking her had been on his mind…

Still was.

He put down his cup and tucked back into his tray.  Even now, his mind’s eye caught the bounce of a teal curl out of its corner.  The glimmer in a pair of sapphire blue eyes not knowing that sapphire was his favorite color and pink sapphires were his favorite jewel.  Pink like a pair of full lips that feigned pouts to get her way.  Ooohh, all the ways he wanted to give it to her.  All he could think of was going out again tonight and seeing if she would be working late again.  He could stop by the factory and help her… The vivid image of the most perfect buttocks he’d ever seen in his life swaying from side to side while bent over a table strewn with papers rose up in his mind.  His cock immediately stirred.  _Fuck.  Going to have to work that off.  Soon._   And not in the way Radditz had suggested he should.  Although…

Vegeta scooped up the last of his eggs and shoved them in his mouth.  Along with his last bite of toast.  He chewed, reaching down (he hoped discreetly) to his lap and adjusted himself before coming back up with the napkin he had laid there.  He wiped his mouth before tossing it down on his tray.  Vegeta rose with his tray as he downed the last of his coffee.

“Get your asses on the field in twenty minutes.”  Vegeta turned and walked away under Nappa and Radditz’s gazes.

*                      *                      *

Normally at this point there would be warning bells going off in the back of his mind courtesy of his body telling him he was annihilating himself.  Grueling workouts were his forte.  But today, not a whisper.  He didn’t know whether to admonish himself or smirk in a way that he knew would bait Radditz (but he also knew that Radditz would never cross the same line twice and it would drive his Lieutenant nuts not being able to ask him about a smirk like that again).  So… he smirked as his powerful, muscular legs pumped easily along the forested trail.

He knew exactly why his body wasn’t begging him to stop.  He wasn’t pushing himself like he normally did.  He was saving himself.  He was saving himself for tonight with her… hopefully.

Footsteps were closing in on him from behind.

“You let us catch up.”  Nappa came into view beside him.

It wasn’t a question although it sounded like it, it was a statement of fact.  Again, Nappa was covering for him and letting his Colonel know that perhaps Vegeta should be just a bit more of his usual self.

“Nappa,” Radditz whined from his other side and that was all he needed.

Vegeta’s smirk turned mischievous and dark.  He bolted out ahead of them.

“ _Shit_.”  He heard Radditz hiss then, “Move your asses!  Pick up the pace!”  Nappa roared at the rest of their men behind them.

Vegeta felt like laughing.  Okay, so he couldn’t save himself just in case.  That was alright.  His lungs burned.  His blood and heartrate thundered in his ears, drowning out his heaving breathes.  The warning bells were blaring sirens.  It was all alright.  What didn’t kill him, would make him stronger.  The first hurdle came into view up ahead.


	6. Tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vegeta spends his evening working beside Bulma to fix the jet fighter and make it ready for military production.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this is a super slow burn for me. Anyways, thank you to my beta, Froglady15, and my artists, @gilbec7796 and @choobi_doodles.

“Oh for God’s sake!”

She stalked off across the room.  Yet again.  She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the only wall in her office that had a window to the outside, even though the window was small and near the top of the wall and thus far out of anyone’s line of sight to the inside.  She fumed at the brickwork.  Once again, she found herself primping some part of herself in a reflective surface.  Not that that was necessarily out of the ordinary for her.  Bulma was notably vain and mirrors were among her nearest and dearest friends, but that wasn’t what was rattling her.  She was primping for that Colonel.  She couldn’t stop thinking about him.  Actually, she couldn’t stop thinking about possibly fucking him.  Possibly?!  Did she really think there was any doubt on _her_ side that she wanted him taking her for all that Adonis body could do to her?!  There was no ‘possibly’, she couldn’t stop thinking about fucking him.

This morning when she’d woken up, she was instantly sour.  Because she had woken up alone.  Granted, she’d woken up on the floor of her office after he’d left and she’d figured on catching a quick nap before the official start of business.  Still, she hadn’t woken up a disheveled mess with his hot, sweaty body cooling on the floorboards next to her.  And that had pissed her the hell off.

Bulma groaned and stomped back over to her desk and checked the papers still sitting on top of it.  There was no hurry to get through these today or even tomorrow for that fact.  The real urgent stuff she’d already finished.  In record time too.  And there again, she knew why.  She’d blazed through the stuff that needed to get done today as well as tomorrow so that she wouldn’t have to worry about losing any grounds on her work if, say, she needed tomorrow morning off.  To, perhaps, get some sleep after staying up all night.  She slapped the files down on her desk and turned away from it.

She hated this about herself.  Really?  She was behaving this way?  Yes, Yamcha was the only man she had ever been with.  Hell, he was the first and only guy she’d ever been interested in sleeping with.  But still, she only had slept with him after she’d accepted his proposal…  She buried her face in the palm of her hand and sighed like the weight of the world was on her shoulders.  It wasn’t, but it felt like it was.  Not in a bad way.  She was excited.  She was excited about seeing Colonel Saiyan again.  That was part of the reason she was stomping around her office on a warpath.  She wanted the God damn time to move faster.  She wanted night to fall.  She wanted to turn on her lamp.  And she wanted to wait to see if he would show up at her office door again.

Last night had been, well, nothing short of wonderful.  They’d talked.  They’d searched her schematics for the mistake that was throwing everything off.  So far they had gone over the empennage and found everything to be okay, so it wasn’t in there.  That left the rest of the plane to go over… more nights of him standing beside her.  Or bent over that table next to her; don’t think she hadn’t stood up only to look down and see his impeccable ass.  Dear God!  And it wasn’t just that he was the sexiest being she’d ever seen in her life.  She could talk to him!  Really talk!  For all of Yamcha’s work in her family’s corporation, his eyes looked as glazed over as a pastry when she started talking about her work to the point that she stopped telling him details and glossed over everything as if she were talking to her mother or sister, who both could care less about anything even remotely like her and her father’s work.  But Colonel Vegeta Saiyan, he, he _informed_ her!  He knew names of things she hadn’t really known.  It wasn’t that Bulma was stupid, far from it, but when she got on a roll on something, she didn’t let little things like proper names get in her way.  What did it matter what something was called so long as she understood what it did and how it worked and everything else that made her understand the thing inside and out.  Vegeta, Colonel Saiyan, knew the names.  Teased her about the names.  He was… playful with her.  And it was all exciting!  She’d curled up under her desk and gone to sleep practically on a cloud.  And she woken up alone with a certain officer on her mind from moment one.

She checked the clock on her wall again.  Hours.  It would be at least hours before he might possibly show up.  Hours… she sighed again.  Grouchy and sullen and waiting (because patience was just so incredibly her strong suit, _Bullshit!_ ).  Bulma walked over to her office door, opened it, and stepped out onto the gangway overlooking the hustle and bustle below.  She closed her office door and headed for the stairway leading down to the lower levels of the factory.  Along the way, she ran into one of her assistants, Andrea Gero, Andy for short.  She’d first come to work for Bulma when she was eighteen and had proven to be more than competent, more than capable ever since.  Bulma side-eyed the tall, thin, blonde woman as she read off details about various departments.

“We’ve had a few problems in freight.”

Bulma nodded, right, get to work, “What sort of problems?”

*                      *                      *

Bulma trudged back into her office.  She flipped on her lamps and slumped into her desk chair.  Problems, boy that had been putting it mildly.  To say the least.  The U-boats were wreaking havoc on supply lines which in turn was wreaking havoc on factories.  Her freight problems…  Turns out the latest shipment of parts she’d been expecting… part of it was blown to bits and sunk at the bottom of the ocean along with half the ship’s crew.  She was saddened at the loss of life and angry that those losses were going to continue unless they managed to get the parts to the machines that the military was going to use to win this damn thing and stop the dying.

She closed her eyes and sunk her face into her hands as she leaned on her desk.  She felt the stinging in them return.  She sniffed.  God, what if… did she dare say it?  What if… what if that had been a warship?  All those soldiers…  What if Vegeta had been on that warship being transported to a battlefield or Andrea’s guy, Krillin?  They weren’t, but still.

_Knock.  Knock._

She looked up.  Her heart froze in her chest.  He was standing there.  Single, curled knuckle still hovering next to the surface of the wood paneling of her door surrounding it’s frosted-glass, window insert.  His hat in his hand.  He looked unsure.

“Is anything wrong, Miss Briefs?”

Bulma stared at him for a moment then looked at her desk lamp, lit.  _That’s right, I turned that on when I came in.  But that was moments ago._   Then she looked over at the small window to the outside.  It was dark.  _When had it gotten dark?  Oh, yeah, that’s why I had to turn on the lamps when I got in here—Wait, I just did that._   Bulma’s eyes returned to the uncertain Colonel still standing in her doorway.  _Had he…  Was he waiting out there for my light to come on?_

“The last worker just left.  I…  Are you staying late again, Miss?”

“Yes,” she cringed, _That was really loud.  And really eager sounding,_ “Yes, I am.”

“Miss Briefs,” he stepped into the room, “Is there something wrong?”

Bulma looked at her desk top again, covered in papers.  A few of them catching her eye, order forms.  Slowly she stood up, “Nothing this wouldn’t solve.  Or at least crack.”

She made her way over to the safe in the far corner.  She dialed in the combination and took out the rolled-up Z-Fighter plans.  She went to her work table and unfurled them.  He watched her move in silence with a frown on his face before stepping up beside her.  He was pleased to see the tension in her shoulders ease a little at his presence by her side and just as close as he had been last night.  He looked down at the plans as she smoothed them out.

He hadn’t expected to find her in here like that.  He’d timed things perfectly so that he was able to see the last workers leave, a pair of women who flirted with the guards for a handful of minutes before finally walking away.  Then he’d nonchalantly walked down the sidewalk like he had the other night, “casually” noticed her light on once again, made some comment under his breath but loud enough for the guards to hear about “Blasted Woman” then walked into the factory and came up here.  His stomach fluttered when he’d seen her door open just like last night, but seeing her at her desk…

“Did…,” he trailed off, hoping to get her to answer the question he was asking for the third time now.

“A U-boat hit a freighter that had some parts we needed on it and they lost the whole shipment and half their crew.”

He nodded.

“I’m…,” she sighed heavily.  He glanced over and saw the invisible weight she was carrying on her shoulders.  She turned to him, he did the same.  She met his eyes, “I regret to inform you, Colonel Ouji, that our timeline for your locomotives and possibly your dirigibles will be delayed.”

He felt a pang at her formality with him.  He thought they’d gotten a little past that last night.  But he nodded just the same, “Thank you for informing me, Miss Briefs.”

She sighed heavily again, eyes lowering.  He stepped closer.  Her eyes shot up to meet his.  Her pupils dilated.  It told him a little of what he wanted to know.  He could kiss her now.  He could do it.  She was receptive to it.  Turned on, excited by his nearness.  He felt his hands trembling around the brim of his hat.  He could so easily reach out and gather her to him.  Press his lips to hers.  He could comfort her with his body.  It wasn’t unheard of for people to find comfort in each other’s bodies.  It was a wartime cliché, but that didn’t mean it was an inaccurate one.  He could do it.

“I-I-Is there…,” he spun the hat slowly in his hands, “something… I can do… to… help?”

_God, yesssss_.  She stared into his eyes and hoped he would kiss her.  Just do one of those things in the romance novels her mother and sister and she herself read near religiously and swoop her up in his strong arms and kiss her like she’d never been kissed before.  But he was fidgeting with his hat and his eyes were so dark and intense she couldn’t tell if they were dilated or what.  All she could tell was that he was nervous for some reason.  He’d walked in with her in a bit of a state of stress, maybe he was thinking better of staying…

“Have you given any thoughts to the plans,” the words tumbled out of her mouth at a rapid-fire pace.  She pointed to the plans, looked at them.  Hoping it would lure his attention there and he’d give staying a second chance.  She had spent all day primping and waiting for him to show up tonight and she’d _stupidly_ blown it by… looking like someone with a massive factory to run.  The truth was she’d looked exactly like she should look.  A war was on, she had two military contracts with the government to uphold rather than one.  German U-boats were blasting shipments and innocent people to smithereens making taking out the U-boats a near impossibility.

He turned to look at the plans, “I believe the empennage is fine.”

“Good, good.  Where should we look at next?”

He glanced over the plans once more then walked away.  Her heart stopped for a few beats until she realized he was walking over to the same guest chair he had last night and watched him deposit his hat on the seat again.  She nearly jumped for joy when his fingers went to the buttons of his uniform jacket and began nimbly undoing them.  Once again, with rolls of his muscular shoulders, he shirked the garment from his Adonis body and she had to squeeze her knees shut and abruptly turn away before, well, before she jumped him… or begged him to take her now.  Or both.  Probably both.  He came to stand close beside her again.  She side-eyed his forearms his rolled-up sleeves revealed crossed over his chest.  Yep, both.  Definitely both.  _Holy shit.  He’s so nice and I’m sooooo horny.  And he’s so freaking sexy!_

“Well,” Vegeta’s mouth worked.  He’d nearly jumped and hooted and hollered for joy when she turned from watching him take his coat off.  With her back turned, he’d taken the opportunity to sniff the air and caught her musky scent again.  Then when he turned, he saw her knees clenched tight together and took the opportunity again to walk up to as close to her side as he could get without being obvious about wanting her.  He cleared his throat, “The, um, the,” _God, her scent was intoxicating_ ; he cleared his throat again, even harder this time, hoping the pain would distract him enough, “the fuselage is, uh, large enough.  It, uh, it should prove to be, um, intricate enough that the, the issue might be contained in there.”

She nodded beside him.  “Good.”  _Good_ , complicated and vast meant more time that he’d stay for at least tonight.  Maybe more nights.  Hopefully.  She just had to quit being stupid and play her cards right.  She could do this.  She could juggle two things at once.  She could be the powerful Heiress running a factory in the middle of the war effort and still be a woman with needs.  Bulma leaned over her plans, looking at them closely just like she had the previous night.

Vegeta watched her lean over the schematics, analyzing them intensely just like she had last night.  For a moment there, he hoped she’d say she wanted him to kiss her.  But then she’d suddenly changed the subject to the schematics of her jet fighter and, well, he’d gone along with it.  Maybe she could see it on his face, in his body language, maybe he was too close to her and she’d picked up on how much he wanted her.  Maybe he was coming on too strong to her.  That was it, he spooked her.  Got too close too fast and she’d had to divert attention.  Yep, he’d, _God, damn it!  I screwed this up!  I spent all day holding myself back in training only to blow it right now, right here!  What the Hell?!  Okay, okay, I can rescue this.  I can redeem myself in her eyes.  If I could just let her get to know me better, talk to her more.  Just like last night.  She’d liked last night, right?  Or at least she wasn’t telling me to go to Hell or leave her alone, so I still have an opening of some sort._

Suddenly she turned to look up at him, her eyes round with something akin to _fear?_   “Is there something wrong, Colonel?”

He nearly winced at the formality again, but sputtered, “No, no, no.”  He leaned down on the table next to her.  His stomach tightening and doing somersaults at the feel of her arm against his; he’d gotten too close to her.  _God, what if she spooks agai—_

Bulma nestled in a little closer.  _God, he feels so good next to me.  What I wouldn’t give to wake up wrapped in his arms, his naked body pressed up to mine, my bedsheets sticking to our still somewhat sweaty bodies…_   Bulma suddenly looked away from him again, licking her lips and tasting the profuse saliva in her mouth.

Vegeta pretended like he didn’t see her abruptly return her attention to the schematics.  This close… licking her lips…  He gritted his teeth and turned his side-eye to the blueprints; _God damn it!  I’m an idiot!  But!  I won’t be an idiot again!_

He licked his own lips, catching her attention, pointed to the rear of the fuselage where it met the empennage, and began to tell her about what he was seeing and what he knew of this juncture.  She listened with rapt attention.


	7. Finally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting chance after chance to get closer to the Woman, Vegeta's distraction and sexual frustration mounts. One night, it snaps. For both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my artist for this event, @gilbec7796, for the fantastic military man Vegeta that I'm posting with this much awaited chapter. Ask and ye shall recieve y'all! The chapter title says it all, finally! And as always, thank you to my beta @Froglady15 and my other artist, @choobi_doodles.

(Thank you to @gilbec7796, check her out on [Tumblr](https://gilbec7796.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/gilbec7796)!)

 

_Three weeks!  Three fucking weeks!_   Vegeta brutalized himself and his subordinates the next morning.  Ran them ragged; three men had passed out from exhaustion, literally.  On the trail.  He berated his men’s weakness as Nappa and Radditz helped the medics load the men onto gurneys and load them onto the racks inside the ambulance.  He roared and spat and made them all cower in the face of his fury.  As soon as the ambulance was gone, he made them all do the run again before leading them into their weight training.  Even then, he didn’t let up.  He couldn’t let up.  He punished himself savagely and they were forced to come along for the intense ride with him.  That night, he’d shown up at her office doorstep, exhausted and he thought too worn to give in to anything.  But she took one look at him, sniffed the air, and sauntered over to him.  Her voice was all sinful teasing and every single note, every single word had his entire body thrumming on the edge of slamming that office door shut and ravishing her right then and there on the floor like a pair of lust-fueled animals.  Shit, he thought he’d been prepared to face her again.  Then she put a single finger on his chest, making him flinch and accused him of being the source of the stench she smelled.  She lifted her finger upward as she told him he needed a shower.  Then she turned on a pair of bright red pumps and walked over to her work table.

And he watched her perfect ass the entire way.  Hell, he followed it!  His eyes trained on it like a hunting dog spotting prey.  For the past three weeks, he tortured his body and his men out of frustration and stood by her side, proving to her the sort of man he was.  Intelligent.  Experienced.  But he got nothing in return.  Nothing other than smiles and questions about her beautiful Z-Fighter jet.

There were other signs, ones she might not know that he caught.  Times where she licked her lips.  Squeezed her knees together.  And her smell…  Fuck!  Her scent filled the air each night and he salivated like a starving damn dog at a kitchen door!

He sniffed the air again, his blood boiling.  _God, she smells so good!_   He wiped the back of his hand under his nose, sniffing.  Trying desperately to get her sweet musk out of his nostrils by filling it with the smell of his sweat and effort from this morning.  But no!  Not tonight.  He was going crazy.  His libido was pacing inside his ribcage.  She licked her lips beside him again and all he could do was stare at her doing it while the animal gripped the bones of his ribs and rattle the cage violently…  His member ached again…  Throbbed again…

Suddenly he turned and stomped away from her.  He just let his feet carry him anywhere but near her.  The back of his hand still under his nose.  His palm turning to wipe the spittle at the corners of his mouth.  _Three weeks!  Three fucking weeks of this!_

Bulma immediately straightened.  She turned, looking at him.  Watching him pacing.

“Colonel?”  She asked worriedly.  Something seemed to be bugging him for a few weeks now.  Was it bad news from the front?

Instantly he turned on her, “ _Vegeta!  Call me Vegeta, damn it!_ ”

She stared.  Wide-eyed.  His heavy, hot breaths puffing in her face.  His blazing, dark eyes boring into hers.

“V-V-Vege-ta,” she whispered.  Uncertain of what was going on, a little afraid.

His heart stopped.  He searched her eyes.  “Say it again,” he demanded.

“Vegeta,” she breathed.

He took a step closer to her.  “Say it again.”

“Vegeta.”  Her legs were starting to tremble.  Her belly fluttered.

He took another step closer.  “Again.”

“Vegeta.”  She gasped.  He was an inch away from her.  Holy shit, his body seemed to be vibrating.  Sending chills in emanating waves through her own body.  The heat coming off him was immense.  Suddenly the room was too hot.  Everything was too hot.

“Miss Briefs?”

“Yes?”  His voice was so low and husky she thought she’d melt.

“May I kiss you?”

_Finally!_   “Yes.”

He reached out, yanked her body to his, and his lips were on hers in the beat of a heart.  He kept her pressed to his body as their lips met for a moment before he closed his eyes and rolled his mouth slowly, intimately over hers.

Bulma closed her eyes; the Romance novels lied.  This wasn’t being swept away, it was being engulfed in an inferno.  This was being kissed like she’d never been kissed before, this was… _Amazing!_   She put her hands to his chest.  Breathing in the man.  After what seemed like nowhere near enough time, his lips broke the kiss with a soft smack, but his mouth stayed near hers.  He opened his eyes.

He gazed upon her face, up close for the first time.  Her eyes were closed and she looked frozen in a moment of pure bliss.  He clutched the fabric of her red, silken blouse at the small of her back.  Slowly her eyes opened.  They gazed into each other’s eyes.  Their pants filling each other’s mouths and nostrils.

They breathed each other in.

Her fingers slowly moved to grip part of his button-up shirt’s center seam in her hand while her other hand slowly slipped up his chest… along his neck (the featherlight brush of the tips of her fingernails barely grazing across his skin making him unbearably hard)… she cupped his neck, gazing into his eyes…

She yanked his face to hers.  Kissing him passionately.  It was a feeding frenzy.

Suddenly he surged forward.  She yelped in his mouth as her butt rammed into the edge of the table.  She heard the wood legs shift on the wood floor, but she could care less as both of his hands pawed her hips.  She grabbed his shirt collar.  His shoulders.  Gripped the fabric of his shirt to pull him closer to her.  The heavy breathing muffled in heaving sounds from their noses as their mouths moved against each other.  His tongue tangling with hers.  She moaned down his throat and grabbed onto his neck again.  Hiking her leg up the outside of his.  His groan rumbled through her whole body and tingled her core as his hands groped and gripped before he finally got a hold of her plump rump and squeezed.

She growled.  _Holy fuck_ , _she growled!  That is so fucking hot!!_   He pressed his body to hers.

Frantically she let go of him and reached behind her.  She shifted her body to try and—His grip on her ass cheeks lifted her up off the ground easily.  She yelped again as he sat her back down on the table top like she’d been trying to get onto anyway.  She snapped her legs around his taut waist.  Staggering him into the table and her.

He growled.  _Holy fuck, he growled!  That is so fucking hot!!  And holy shit is he hard!!  How long has he been like this?!_

She fairly whined as she kissed him even deeper and pulled on the shirt fabric around his neck again.  Jesus, she wanted to rip this fucking thing off his body!

She felt him stiffen even more between her legs, felt it twitch.  She whimpered.  Grabbed his tie and yanked, losing her balance.

_Oh fuck.  Oh fuck.  Oh fuck.  This is incredible._   He let go of her fantastic ass and braced his palms on the table top as she fell back on it.  Pulling him with her.  Pulling him on top of her.  He moaned and moaned with every inch of descent.  _Holy shit!  This was really happening!  This was really fucking happen—_ His mouth nearly lost contact with hers.  He rose up on his tiptoes to maintain it, but as she laid back further, his tongue slipped further away from hers.  _No!_   He hiked up a knee on top of the table and leveraged himself up on top of her.  God, he was on top of her!  He was really on top of her!  Out of nowhere, he felt her fingers lacing through his hair at the base of his skull.  He groaned at the electric volts it sent racing through his body.  His hips bucked into her uncontrollably.

She growled again.  And he lost all sense of himself.  His hands left the table and found her body again.  He gripped that tiny waist of hers.  Slipped and slid up and down her sides.  Feeling every voluptuous curve, exploring every curve.  Then one hand reached up and found one of her breasts.  He squeezed.  She moaned and felt like she was melting under him.  He molded and massaged the pillowy flesh in his hand.  He felt her shudder powerfully beneath him.

_Fuck!!!_   He was careful not to break their kiss as his hands left her body and frantically dug at his necktie.  He finally got a good hold of it and yanked harshly.  Two snaps and the thing was loose enough.  He began fondling with the buttons of his shirt.  Her hands left his scalp to aid his fingers.  She began blindly fumbling with the buttons.  But it wasn’t working.  Neither of them were getting a single button undone.  A creeping feeling of this moment suddenly slipping away from him, suddenly slipping from his fingers filled him with dread.  _No, no!!_   He wasn’t losing this moment.  Not again!  He’d pull the fucking thing off if he had to.  His fingers dug at his hips.  Clawing the fabric from where it was tucked into his waistband.  He felt her fingers tangle with his, both working to free his shirt from his pants.  Suddenly he felt the cool air on his waist at his sides.  Part of his shirt was free!  He pulled once more and—Her hands touched his flesh.  He shuddered.  Groaning.  He thought he nearly came.

She leaned in, plunging her tongue deeper into his mouth.  Shit, his skin was as smooth as silk.  And burning hot.  God, this was heaven.  She fairly purred her moans.  She wrapped her hands around his sides.  Felt every shift of skin slipping and sliding over absolutely ripped muscles.  Veins.  Her nails pressed into his burning hot skin involuntarily.

His hips rolled into her.  Her legs tightened around him as she felt the press of his hardness against her wet core.  She groaned, hands pulling on his back to hold him close to her.  She thought she nearly came.

Fuck, the way she was holding him.  He needed to hold her too.  He wanted to touch her too.  He had to touch her.  His hands abandoned his shirt and slipped to the tops of her knees on either side of his hips.  He gripped the supple flesh there.  And followed it.  His fingers crawling up her skin.  He felt it goosepimple beneath his touch.  Heard her breathing pick up.  Felt her hips move against his.  Felt her hands abandon his back to hold onto his neck.  As his hands travelled, he realized her black skirt had hiked up her body far more than he had thought then he felt the soft hem brush his fingertips.  His hands dove underneath and took hold of her hips.  Her skin was searing hot and smoother than the silk of her blouse.  His fingers fondled something lacy.  He slipped his fingers under and around the waistband of her lace panties.

He paused for a moment and she moved her head in nods.  He pulled.  He was going to pull this thing off her body and if it put up any resistance, he didn’t have any qualms about ripping it off her body.  He was going to take her panties off her.  Undo his pants.  Slip himself inside her and pound her sweet pussy into oblivion on this very table… this table… this…

All of a sudden his hands were at her wrists, pulling her hands away from his body.  His tongue retracting from her mouth.  She tried reaching for him again, but he restrained her.  He leaned up away from her as he finally succeeded in pushing her hands away from him.

Their kiss broke.

They panted.

He kept his head bowed as he leaned over her, bracing himself on his hands on the table top on either side of her.  His eyes out of her sight.

She stared at him.  The confusion on her face.  “Wh… what is it?”  _What happened?  Did I… did I do something wrong?  What did I do wro—_ “What was that?  What did you say?”  He’d mumbled something.

He mumbled again, still not meeting her eyes.

“What did you sa—”

“You deserve a bed.”  He said quietly.  Slowly he raised his head to meet her eyes, “You deserve a bed.”

She stared at him.  Her heart melting in the face of him along with her body.  He’d stopped everything because he felt she deserved better than to be fucked on a table.  She deserved a bed… Bulma searched his eyes, “I have a bed in my apartment.”

Vegeta looked away to the side a moment before meeting her eyes again.


	8. Kids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vegeta and Bulma opt to move their liaison to Bulma’s apartment… until there’s a knock at her door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again thank you to Froglady15 for being my beta for Vegebulocracy's Mini Bang 2019 event! And artists @gilbec7796 and @choobi_doodles for choosing my story to do some fabulous art for!

Once again, she was primping herself, this time to no reflective surface at all.  He stood beside her, but also a little behind.  Electricity seemed to be snapping like some sort of crazy lightning storm between them.  She could tell his black eyes were zeroed in on her like prey and she found it exhilarating.  It had been a scramble to get themselves resituated after he’d agreed take their sudden, heated exchange to her apartment.  _You deserve a bed…  I have a bed in my apartment…_   She shuddered helplessly at the memory of mere minutes ago.  Suddenly she felt his chest pressed to her back.

“Something wrong?”  He whispered in her ear.  His voice like velvet-covered gravel.

She shivered again, her voice hitched and breathless, “Nothing wrong at all.”

She wanted him to touch her again.  She was melting back into him like butter set over a red-hot stove.  She felt his breathing pick up between her shoulders.  He wanted to touch her too.

The open-air, industrial elevator came to a stop.  He moved quickly to open the grated doors as she moved to lower its level to lock the system into place.  He stepped back to let her exit first.  Their footsteps were the only ones to be heard as they headed for the factory’s doors.  Again, his hand reached the door handle first, he pulled it open, and waited for her to pass through first before following her out in the cool, night air.

The guards on either side of the door immediately snapped to stiff attention as she passed between them and began descending down the stairs.  At first, when they did that, it startled her, but after three weeks, it was normal.  Silently, Vegeta followed her down the stairs.  On the sidewalk, she turned to him.

“Good evening, Colonel,” earlier, as he scrambled to tuck his shirt back in and tighten his tie and she to pull her panties back on and push her skirt back down, they had discussed how they’d get pass the guards.  Normally, he left before she did.  They never said goodbye to each other except in her office.

“Miss Briefs, do you not have transportation to your residence?”  Vegeta asked.

“No, it’s close.  I walk.”

He frowned at that.  Looked around.  Despite their agreement that he put on a show, she knew he wasn’t.  He was genuinely concerned and unhappy at hearing that she’d been walking home every night.  He looked back at her again.

“And you have no escort?”

“No.”  She saw the reaction cross his face and she quickly sought to quell it.  “It’s fine really, Colonel.”

“May I walk you home, Miss Briefs?”

She stalled, mouth agape.  Okay, this was all looking really good and convincing to the guards.  It’d be nice if it was all actually just an act and not really happening.  Her stomach fluttered and she desperately hoped the guards couldn’t see the flush of her cheeks.

“Yes,” she finally said.  “It’s, uh, it’s this way.”  She turned around, he stepped up beside her, and they began to walk away from the factory.

She had no doubts that the guards were watching them leave, however…

“It really is fine.  The war hasn’t had the usual effect here.  Supplies are still good.  No need for looting and people are too busy just trying to survive in the rationing that there’s no need to jump anyone walking home alone at night.”

“I’m not concerned about someone trying to mug you, although that’s bad enough.”

It didn’t take her long to figure out what he was concerned about.  She looked over at him as he watched the other side of the road busy with night shifts of businesses that really wouldn’t hit the full stride of their open doors until morning and restaurants and pubs still open.  Outside of one, a big burly man was shoving out a couple of young men staggering drunk and bellowing at them as he threw them into the gutter literally to clear off until they could behave.  Vegeta eyed them directly, his hand blindly reaching out beside him to hold her elbow.  She followed his line of sight.

“Too much drink in some men’s system makes them think they can get away with anything… with anyone.”  He growled menacingly.

“I know, I live on this street, and that’s why I carry a gun in my purse.”

Vegeta looked at her.  She met his gaze.

“I’m not stupid.  I’m stunningly gorgeous and the most brilliant person on the planet, I’d be a fool not to know how to protect myself.”

“Knowing how and actually doing it are two different thi—”

“I shot a man between the eyes when I was twelve years old when he tried to drag me into his car.”

He stared at her.

“I’m no fool.”

He nodded and they kept moving.

“You know,” she started and he side-eyed her, the playfulness in her voice blatant; she smiled at him, “Your chivalry back there was a real turn on.”

He smirked and she felt weak in the knees again, “And your ability to handle yourself in a crisis…”

She bit her lip.  He licked his lips.

“I can bite that for you,” he purred.

She stared straight ahead and picked up her pace to nearly running.  He kept pace beside her.  Their engines were revving all over again.  It wasn’t long before she abruptly turned and began hopping up on the stone stairs of a four-story brick building.  She fetched her keys from her purse as he waited behind her.  She got the front door open and they entered.  She led the way up another flight of stairs inside… then around a landing and up another flight of stairs… then around another landing and up another flight…

His member was aching again.  It really was a turn on when she’d said that she’d actually shot someone between the eyes.  Kidnapping were tumultuous situations, especially for the victims.  That she had the wherewithal to know to draw her gun and the ability to maintain a steady enough hand to fire it with enough accuracy to hit a mark between the eyes, regardless of whether she’d been aiming there or not, was amazing.  This Woman was fully capable of taking care of herself in a crisis turned him on like he couldn’t believe.  And when she’d bit her lip, fuck!  “What floor are you on?”  Vegeta snapped.

“Fourth.”  She huffed.

“Shit.”

“You’ll definitely like it when we get to the top.”

“Hmmm,” he grumbled.

They kept climbing stairs.  He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take.  He was literally staring at her rump in his face.  Two perfectly round, conjoined spheres the shape of a ripe peach bouncing right under his nose.  Shapely legs sticking out from the tight-fitting, black skirt.  Right down to the pair of red pumps with the ridiculous, pencil-thin heels.  He focused on that as he gritted his teeth.

“You should get rid of those ridiculous shoes before you break your neck.”

“I’d love to, but there are attire standards that I have to meet.”

“And who came up with those?”

“Men.”

“Tch.”

Finally, they reached the top of the stairs.  Before he could open his mouth, she angled directly for the first door just to the left of the door straight ahead of them.  She fumbled with her keys again, picking the right one from the set on the metal ring she had them on.  He stood as close behind her as he could, watching over her shoulder…

A door opened off to their left.  Vegeta looked up to see an old woman watching them from her opened door.  She was small, white hair sticking out from underneath a purple, bonnet-looking, crocheted hat, dressed in a white nightshift that went a little past her knees.  Her skin so crepe-like and bubbly with warts and other dermal maladies, it also had a greenish hue that gave off the notion of a mummy.  And with a face contorted by a look of utter and complete disdain at the sight of the two of them at Bulma’s door.  Suddenly Vegeta didn’t feel so keen to get in there and be doing… _premarital_ things.

“Hi, Miss Baba,” Bulma greeted happily as she stuck her key in her lock and turned.

The old hag snorted derisively and slipped back into her own apartment, slamming her door shut loudly.

Vegeta stared at the hag’s door as Bulma opened hers, “Maybe I should…”

“Oh, you’re fine.  She’s just a busy-body.”  Bulma slipped inside and turned to invite him in, “Besides, you should hear the stuff I know about her.”

Vegeta looked at Bulma, “Like what?”

“Get inside,” she smiled.

Vegeta gulped and hesitantly stepped across the threshold.

Bulma closed the door behind him.  Plunging the darkened room into even less light.  Vegeta caught some moonlight trying to break through the clouds shining through a window on the far side of the small room.  He heard Bulma toss down her purse and keys as his eyes struggled to adjust.  It was… well, it was a small single room.  A bed was under the far window, the largest window by far, although it was still average size.  The bed itself looked to be made of metal painted white but flaking, was the most unadorned, basic thing he’d ever seen, and was maybe big enough for two.  Barely.

“So what about the old woman next door?”

“She’s a hooker.”

He turned and stared at her.

She giggled at him in the near dark, “Yup.”

“B-b-but, but… she…”

“Was giving us the stink eye?  Uh-huh,” Bulma nodded, stepping closer to him, “Even though I’ve only ever been with Yamcha, she doesn’t approve of me having sex out of wedlock.  And, well, bringing you back here with me, she might very well think I’m turning tricks or something.  Not liking the competition.”

Vegeta glowered.  He didn’t like hearing her talk about herself as some sort of whore.

“You are _not_ competition,” he growled.

“No,” her hands were on his chest and he could see her eyes clearly this close, “I’m monogamous.”

Her lips touched his and all thoughts of anything else went out of his mind.  He reached out and wrapped an arm around her waist.  She tilted her head in response and he felt her tongue lick for entrance.  He opened his mouth and her tongue slipped into his mouth.  He kissed her back deeply.  Her arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him in close.

 _This is amazing_ , his freehand reached down and cupped her rump.  Then he lifted.

Her legs wrapped around his waist.  With her legs spread, his nostrils filled with her scent again, making him salivate.  His cock twitched in the confines of his pants again.  She sighed into his mouth and his hands reflexively gripped the fabric of her clothes and her flesh again.  He turned and walked her carefully over to the bed he’d seen in the dark.  His hat falling off his head to join all sorts of things he’d seen strewn all over the floor.  Her shoes fell off her feet and clopped onto the floor.  Her hands shifting to his tie, working to get it loose as their tongues tangled and danced together enticingly.

As soon as his shins hit the bedframe, he opened his eyes just enough to catch a glimpse of where they were situated before he lifted his knee and set it down on top of the soft, cushy mattress.  Angling their bodies and finally tilting over.  She kept her legs around him as he laid her back on the bed.  She moaned hedonistically when he finally laid his body down on hers.  She rolled her hips into him.  His tongue untangled from hers and he nipped at her lower lip.  She gasped.  He smirked.

“I said I could bite that for you.”

He angled his head to go back in for another kiss when _knock knock._

They froze.  Turning their heads to look at her door.  _Who the hell was that?!_   She wasn’t expecting—

“Miss Bulma,” came a small voice.

Bulma gasped, wide-eyed, “ _Shit, I forgot about the kids_.”

Vegeta gaped at her as she struggled to get him off her, her focus on the door.  He slumped off her, dumbstruck.  _Kids?!  She has kids?!_   He didn’t know…  _She had kids?!_   He sat back on the mattress, staring at nothing as she scrambled off the bed and to the door.

“ _Shit, shit, shit_ ,” she hissed, snapping him out of his reverie with the flip of a light switch.  He watched her frantically trying to smooth herself over again and quickly jumped to his feet, doing the same.  She turned to him to check him, he met her eyes and nodded, and she turned back to the door and opened it.


	9. Introductions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything stops when Bulma opens her door and welcomes in a group of war orphans that she’s been helping to take care of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my beta Froglady15 for helping me out so much during this Mini Bang event. Thank you to my artists, @gilbec7796 for her art and @choobi_doodles for her art to debut next chapter!
> 
> I hope you've all been enjoying Vegebulocracy's Mini Bang 2019 event and all the other authors' fics and artists' artwork. This is the next to last chapter that I will be posting for this event.

A flood of small bodies poured in.  Well, _six_ tiny bodies…  That looked nothing like her.  Vegeta stared.  Children, yes, but it was clear that not a single one was hers.  In fact, three were very clearly Saiyan children.  He looked up at Bulma again, what the Hell was going on here?

“Miss Bulma,” the chorus went up from little faces staring up at Bulma’s smiling face.

“Hiya.  How is everyone tonight?”

A myriad of little voices, boy and girl, tittered away at her.  Each talking over the others and all talking at once to Bulma.  She beamed like an angel at them.  Vegeta watched her, amazed.  She didn’t interrupt a single one of them.  She simply stood there, absorbing what she could.  For some reason, his stomach fluttered uncontrollably at the sight of her so, so… maternal.  It was… he had thought of her…  When he first laid eyes on her, and heard her, his interest had been piqued by the bold, young woman standing at a conference room door in a factory, arms laden with documents and telling off the posh dumbass in front of her.  Then the idiot backed down from her and she’d strode in to take command of the meeting as the Heiress they were supposed to be dealing with all along.  Later on, unbeknownst to her, he saw the young woman trying to deal with the trials of a relationship in which her partner didn’t respect or admire her; in fact he was trying to muscle her out of being the boss of her own domain, and she had ended it admirably.  That night, he got to meet the young woman that was keeping a brilliant design all of her own engineering secret until she found the last elusive flaw and could present him with a project that could go straight into production.  And every night since then he’d met that brilliant, beautiful young woman over a blueprint for discussion so riveting and playful he hadn’t experienced anything like it before.  Minutes ago, he got to meet the young woman that was a steamy, delectable goddess that hungered for his touch and his tongue as much as he did for hers.  And now, he was meeting the young woman that was acting as a mother to a brood not her own with a warm, tender smile on her face that he could see permeating her temptress body. 

Somehow, it all made her even more alluring, even more attractive.  Good God, he was going to have to be careful around her, he was deeply in danger of falling in love with the Woman.  That, that hadn’t been the plan; he hadn’t known what the plan was other than to simply be able to be in the same room as her without thinking of taking her to bed… yeah, that hadn’t worked out well.  He was here, well, _had_ been here to take her to bed before the knock at her door.  Vegeta shifted his weight slightly from foot to foot.  Suddenly one of the faces turned to him.

Vegeta froze.  Dark eyes met dark eyes.  It was a little boy.  A little boy that… reminded him of his little brother somehow.  Maybe it was the boy’s extraordinarily tiny frame or the small spikes of hair, one falling over his eye like a sheepish attempt at a bang just like Tarble, just like he had at that age before he decided to grow his hair out more and style it more like his father’s…

“A soldier.”  The boy said reverently in a voice that was still light with prepubescence.

Suddenly all the little faces turned to Vegeta.  He stood there awkwardly.

“I, um…”  What the Hell was he supposed to do now?

Vegeta gulped in the face of so many eyes staring at him.  It was different than when he was in front of his men; his men were battle-tested, battle-hardened, and they knew he was too.  Children were, were… brats.

He was spared some when some of the eyes returned to Bulma.  She grinned even more, even more amused, at the chorus of questions about who he was.  Except for one little boy, that same one that reminded him so much of Tarble.  Their eyes remained locked.  Vegeta’s eyes noticed the subtle movements of the boy’s pupils, he was eyeing his facial features up to Vegeta’s unique flame of hair.  An unsuspecting person might think the boy was giving him the once over to see if Vegeta might be his father, but that couldn’t be possible given Vegeta’s sexual history or rather _lack_ of one.  No, it was much more likely that the boy was making comparisons.  The child’s dark eyes traveled back down Vegeta’s face to his uniform.  The subtle movements again let Vegeta know that this child wasn’t exactly unfamiliar with military garb.  He knew exactly where to look on his shoulders… his lapel… the left side of his chest… the right… his stomach… his cuffs.  Yep, this kid knew about military uni—the boy glanced over at the others and Bulma, noted they were sufficiently distracted then began looking around the room.  Searching.  Vegeta kept an eye on this one.  Suddenly the boy’s roaming eyes stopped.  Quietly, but not without notice (Bulma’s eyes were tracking him discreetly), the boy broke off from the rest of the group.  He carefully picked his way over to Vegeta’s fallen hat and retrieved it from the floor.

He dusted off the dark olive fabric of it.  He was careful to avoid getting too many petite fingerprints on the mahogany leather.  The child held the cap gingerly as he brought up part of his ragged brown shirt to wipe his prints from the leather brim.  But he hesitated, frowning from his dirty rags to the pristine cap.  Vegeta saw tiny, slim shoulders bow and the child’s face lower in abject humiliation as he lowered the rags of his shirt hem and slowly presented himself before him.  With head bowed, the boy held out Vegeta’s hat.  Vegeta took the hat.

“Thank you,” he offered quietly to the dejected creature standing in front of him.

“I’m sorry I soiled it, Sir,” the voice was soft and timid and completely apologetic.

Vegeta frowned as he turned the cap in his hands, marring the elegant leather with his own fingertips.

“You didn’t, boy.  I find it very hard to place my own cap on my head without touching the brim, why would you be any different?”

A pair of big, incredibly round, charcoal black eyes rose up to meet his own black eyes.  The larger ones wide with shock.  Vegeta eyed him, wishing he knew how to put on a smile that wasn’t a smirk or something that signaled ‘I’m about to kill you and enjoy doing it, Asshole’, but he only seemed capable of doing that for the woman.  Instead, he chose to not try and put on fake airs for the kid, children seemed to be able to smell that and see right through that as surely as if it were a window made of crystal-clear glass.

“What’s your name, boy?”

He caught Bulma looking at them, openly watching them.  Following her lead, the other children looked over as well.  But the boy seemed to be stunned into silence.  Mouth gawked, eyes wide, body unnaturally still.

Bulma walked closer to them, the small group travelling with her like some sort of massive skirt.

“Colonel Ouji, this is Cabba.  Cabba, this is Colonel Ouji.”  She answered for the boy.

Vegeta shot her a quick glance when the boy’s mouth suddenly snapped shut and he nodded emphatically.  The smile she gave him was soft and demur.  She nodded, confirming his suspicion that she had come forward on the boy’s behalf to snap him out of his shock.  Again, he felt his stomach flutter and clench in the face of yet another thing about her he admired.  Yes, he was quickly becoming deadly close to falling in love with her.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Cabba.”

Suddenly the boy’s lithe frame snapped ramrod straight.  His arm and hand snapping to crisp, regulation salute.  “Yes, Sir.  You too, Sir.”  He barked out.

Vegeta didn’t know whether to wince at the volume or admire the child’s tenacity to address him as accurately as possible.  And accurate it was.  Yes, indeed this boy had a military lineage of some sort and with a name like Cabba, Vegeta was sure that the boy was a Saiyan.  Vegeta glowered, that fact complicated things… well, maybe not.  Right now, it was merely an assumption that the boy and two others behind him were Saiyan children, but there was no concrete proof.  He grimaced, did he dare do what he knew was expected of him now?  His eyes rose to meet Bulma’s, did she know what was expected of him to do, what was expected of her to do?

Her sapphire blue eyes met his with this look… he’d seen that look in her eyes before.  In the conference room.  When men, one in particular, had sought to cut her out, she’d forced them to back down.  Forced them to fail.  She strode up to the table with that same look in her eyes.  It was confident defiance.  A dare.

He met it head on as he had before.  She knew.  She was choosing to go against what would be demanded of her in a circumstance like this.  Did he choose to go along with her?

She gestured at the child standing nearest Cabba, a girl.  A Saiyan girl.  Her hair was a crown of spikey, thick, black hair and she had a glint in her charcoal eyes, she was a scrappy one.  He could tell.  She stood with feet spread shoulder-width apart, balled-up fists on her hips, and she met his eyes and wasn’t looking away or flinching in any way possible.  Provocative.  An intimidation tactic.  This one, she was street-wise, molded and shaped by a certain type of toughness.

“This is Caulifla.”

Again, a Saiyan name he noted.  He nodded, the girl did not.  He noted that as well.

Then Bulma gestured beside Caulifla to a little boy with an olive pallor to his skin and knobby brow bones.  He was shorter than all the others, possibly younger than all the rest, but Vegeta had a suspicion as well that that might be the malnutrition rearing its ugly head when it came to the child’s physiology.   He wore a shabby, robe-like sack of a garment; it might have been white at one time but was now fairly grey with dirt and grime.  He wore a long, garnet vest over it with a bunch of the grimy, ‘white’ fabric gathered around his neck, probably to keep out the cold.  Rare for his youth, he was bald; again, Vegeta thought, probably due to malnourishment.

“This Dende.”  The child nodded.

Vegeta nodded back.  Bulma gestured to the fat, little boy not much taller than Dende that was sticking close to the green-skinned waif.  This boy was dark-skinned with brightly pigmented lips.  He wore a shabby garnet vest himself with puffy pants that had one time been white as well, but now were just as filthy as Dende’s robe.

“This is Popo.”  The boy smiled kindly and waved.

Vegeta nodded again.  Bulma gestured to her right.  This boy was slight and slightly taller than Popo but still far shorter than Cabba and had pale, waxen skin.  His hair was matted and greasy and stuck together like an imitation mohawk.  The coat he wore was nothing but rags at the bottom ‘hem’, Vegeta was fairly certain the coat had been longer but had been ripped shorter at some point in time and had been perhaps a pretty shade of blue once.  It was held closed by a sash of orange fabric.  He wore a pale grey jumpsuit that Vegeta recognized as something the military technicians wore and it was bunched and gathered awkwardly on the slim, short frame.  All of it covered in holes and dirt, probably why the jumpsuit had been abandoned in the first place.

“This is Shin.”  The little boy tipped forward ever so slightly in greeting, his black eyes trying to pin Vegeta where he stood.

Vegeta nodded.  Then Bulma patted the head next to her other side.  He’d been wondering when she was going to get to the child that clutched her leg while simultaneously sucking her thumb.  The last of the three he’d pegged as Saiyan.  This one though, she was timid like a mouse.  Cowering.  Desperate for Bulma’s maternal touch and presence.  Aside from the single chunk of hair that fell over one of her eyes like a try at a bang like the other two presumably Saiyan children, her hair was pulled back into a top-knot ponytail held together with a piece of twine.  She wore a long shirt to act like a dress, cinched at the waist by a yellow-colored rope.

“And this is Kale.”

Again, a Saiyan name.  He nodded.  And the child cowered deeper into Bulma’s side.  Bulma slipped her hand to rest her palm flat between the girl’s shoulder blades.  Timid, charcoal eyes furrowed and nearly shut under his gaze.

“Children,” Bulma’s voice was sweet with care and kindness, “This is Colonel Ouji.”

“Hello,” the chorus was quiet and uncertain this time.

“H-hello,” Vegeta said.

Silence.

“I-I-I should be going,” he said sheepishly, turning his hat between his fingertips again, “You, you seem to be quite busy now.”

He looked up at her eyes and immediately wished he hadn’t.  Her brows were furrowed and there were deep pools of pain.  He’d hurt her.

“Please,” her voice was quiet, but he could hear the pleading in it that was a bit too deep and genuine, “stay.  I’m sure things will be alright.”

He held her gaze.  The feel of her from earlier haunting his arms.  He swore he could still feel her heart racing against his chest… or had that been his own racing against hers… or both?

“I…,” he trailed off.  Her eyes, she was so hurt…

_Grrr_.  His eyes widened, so did hers, and they looked over at Caulifla now holding her stomach.  _Yep_ , he thought, _Saiyan_.  He knew the abnormally loud sound of an empty stomach.

Caulifla turned to Bulma, “I’m hungry, Miss B, what’s for dinner?”

God, she sounded like Radditz… or at least she talked like him.  Good God, that oaf slept with anything and everything that would have him.  Vegeta wanted to palm his face, if that idiot had gone around creating children and then not taking responsibility for them… he was going to kill him and he was going to enjoy it.

“Well, I-I…”

He looked up again and saw the panic on her face.  Did she have any food for them?  Especially enough for a Saiyan let alone three?  Vegeta frowned.

“Maybe we can take a look,” he offered.

All the eyes turned to him again, but he was only concerned with one pair.  She looked relieved but questioning.

“You’re staying,” Cabba asked.

“Yes,” Vegeta nodded, his eyes not leaving hers.  He was rewarded with the most enchanting smile he’d ever seen in his life.  He felt a corner of his mouth lift up.

There was silence again.  He caught the kids looking back and forth between he and Bulma; Dende and Popo starting grinning, catching on first.  Vegeta didn’t care though as he kept gazing at that beautiful, smiling face.

“Are you two gonna make babies?”  Caulifla asked.

“Whoa!”  Bulma screeched.

“No!”  Vegeta snapped.  _Radditz, she had to be Radditz’s.  I’m going to kill that asshole._

The other kids giggled at Bulma and Vegeta’s extreme reactions.

“Let’s see how long you guys laugh with food stuffed in your mouths.”  Bulma threatened.

The children cheered and she turned, leading them to her large kitchen table.  Vegeta watched them go… watched her expertly corral what was little more to him than a herd of cats.  Designating a chair for each child.  It had crossed his mind that her table had been unusually large for such a small abode, it was as long as her bed, but had initially chalked it up to possibly being her work desk while she was at home.  The seven chairs around it should have clued him, but he had ignored it.  Now he knew why.  A chair for each child and herself… would she add an eighth for him?  He shook the foolish notion from his head.  He hadn’t come here to sit at her table with a bunch of children, he hadn’t come here to sit at her table period.  He had come to her apartment to act on his attraction to her.  That didn’t require her table; if he wasn’t going to screw her on her worktable in her office, then he wasn’t going to screw her on her kitchen table in her apartment.  His agenda had been the bed.  Or that was what he kept telling himself.  Vegeta sighed heavily and slipped his cap on his head.  He trudged toward the herd and the woman.


	10. War Orphans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vegeta quickly finds himself in danger… of falling deeply in love with Bulma Briefs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it the last chapter for this event. But don't worry, I will be continuing this story it's just that this is as much of it that would fit inside the word limit for this event. Finally, thanks again to my beta for this event, the fabulous @Froglady15, her help was amazing. Thanks to @gilbec7796 for her fantastic cover art and handsome military Vegeta pic. Please check out her Tumblr and Twitter, her handles on there are the same. Thanks to @choobi_doodles for her fabulous piece of art that finishes out this fic for the event. Isn't it awesome! Check her out on her Tumblr and Twitter, links I posted below her pic.

(This fabulous art comes courtesy of @choobi_doodles!  Check out her [Tumblr](https://choobi-doodles.tumblr.com/) and her [Twitter](https://twitter.com/choobi_doodles)!)

 

He leaned back against the kitchen counter, his butt resting on the edge.  Watching the children scarfing down… well, the Saiyan children were scarfing down the vegetable sandwiches.  The others, Popo ate at a normal pace, the Dende child had taken the smallest sandwich but was gulping down glass after tall glass of water like some sort of dying fish, and little Shin took every bite with a strange sort of reverence for each piece of food, almost like he was praying before and after each bite.

“I think he’s from a religious background.”  She said quietly beside him as she cleaned up what few dishes were in her sink.

He glanced over at her.

“I don’t know if one or both of his parents were religious, but he is.  Very much so.  I suspect that he might have been given over to a seminary at some point in time before now.”

“A seminary?”  He asked back just as quietly so as not to draw the attention of the children to their discreet conversation about them.

She nodded.

“There have been a number hit by bombs in other cities near here.  It wouldn’t be odd if he migrated here from any one of them.”

Vegeta nodded and looked back over at the lithe, little frame again praying over his bite.

“It’s the same for Popo.  Kind of.”  She said softly.  “According to him, he comes from a long line of deacons.  There was an air raid on one of the lookout towns near the coast.  His parents were killed.”

Vegeta nodded again.

“On his way here, he met Dende.  His father was a deacon, but his brothers weren’t, they went into the military.  His father passed away from old age, three of his brothers were killed by the Nazis.  There fourth is still alive, but we can’t get anything out of the Ministry.”

“We?”  Vegeta asked, looking over at her.

She nodded, “As a child, they wouldn’t even talk to him without an adult.  _Dumbasses_ ,” she grumbled before moving on, “So I went with him and inquired on his behalf.  _And,_ of course, they won’t talk to me about a damn thing.  So here we are.  We don’t even know if his brother is alive or if his brother knows Dende’s alive or if he even knows where Dende is at.”  She glared at the dishwater.

Vegeta glanced down.  If she scrubbed that plate any harder or faster, she was going to shatter the thing and hurt herself.  He shifted his hand from resting on the edge of the countertop on either side of him and placed it over her wrist.  She stopped and looked over at him.  Their eyes meeting.  He saw the distress, the anger that smoldered in the sapphire blue.  The corners of his lips turned down, he knew how she felt about this.  He hated being the person that, at least for his people, was one of the reasons such communications were as restricted as they were.  After all this, reunification was going to be a second level to this Hell.  One that could potentially be much, much worse.  His thumb gently moved back and forth over her damp skin.  She smiled tenderly at him and moved the plate into the rinsing side of the basin, taking herself out of his grasp.  He returned his hand to the countertop’s edge and went back to eyeing the children.  Well, that explained those three, but…

His dark eyes slid to the other three at her kitchen table.  Those three…  This would be different.  Was different by law.  If they were Saiyans, and everything in his gut told him they were, then there was no further guess work to be done about this.  There was a Saiyan law that was rendered international law during wartime.  If there were any orphans made so by the war or any unattended Saiyan children anywhere outside the boundaries of Sadala, then they were to be handed over to the nearest Saiyan consulate and returned to Sadala immediately.  From there, the Saiyan government would conduct reunification with whatever surviving family member could be found; if no such relative could be found, then the child would be held as a ward of the state in any number of state-run facilities and would be eligible for adoption by a Saiyan family.  The law was clear.  Crystalline.  Technically speaking, when he went back to the base, he should report these three to his superiors.  Technically speaking, when he went back to the base, he should bring these three with him to hand over to the Saiyan Ministry.

Once again, he side-eyed the teal-haired woman next to him.  Cleaning the dishes she’d used to slice up the bread and fresh vegetables the children were eating now.

He didn’t want to do this… but he had to.

“And… the other three?”

“I didn’t ask.”  Her profile set grimly.

So she did know.  _Shit_ , he didn’t want to do this.

“What _do_ you know?”

“I told you I didn’t ask.”

Her hands stilled in the soapy basin.  She stared at its murky depths.  Refusing to meet his eyes.

“Children talk anyways when they trust somebody.  You wouldn’t have to.”

Her stare turned to a glare.  She pursed her mouth tightly into a thin line.

“You know I have to—”

“That’s only if you know for sure,” she snapped sharply.  Her glare turned on him.  He fought the urge to shrink away.  _Holy shit, does she look scary when she’s angry_.  But there again, he also felt like he wanted to hop her up on the counter and take her until neither one of them could breath.   _Not in front of the children of course._   She was a fighter in her own way.  Going toe-to-toe with him over the safety and protection of these children.  These _Saiyan_ children.  She was fiercely defending Saiyan children right in his face.  “You.  Don’t.  Know.  For.  Sure.”

“Neither.  Do.  You.”

She opened her mouth.  Then quickly shut it.  Returning to the last dish in the suds.

He watched.  Feeling the distance.  He looked at the floor at his feet.  Catching sight of nearly every part of his uniform… and the meaning behind it all.  The man inside it.  Wearing it.  He knew what was expected of him.

She shifted the last dish to the rinsing basin and pulled the plug on the soapy basin’s drain.

Although.  She wasn’t what was expected of him either.  None of his interactions with her were anything of what was expected of him.  It was expressly forbidden to fraternize with someone that was technically working for him; he oversaw her fucking contracts for God’s sake.  He wasn’t supposed to be meeting her at night in her office even if it was to work on the Z-fighter project together.  And he definitely wasn’t supposed to paw her and kiss her and hike her up on her desk to try and fuck her.  He definitely wasn’t supposed to be here in her apartment for the exact same thing.

“I…,” he said quietly.  He glowered at her apartment floor.  He could tell she was looking at him.  “I should go.”

“Colonel?”

_Good,_ she used his title.  That would make this easier to walk away from.  He’d already screwed up so much.  He had to admit to himself that he just couldn’t shake this woman from himself.  From now on, he would appoint someone to have direct contact with her until it was absolutely necessary that he come face-to-face with her.

Vegeta pushed himself away from her counter and turned to face her, the children looking over at him from his periphery.  He was careful to stare at her throat.  It wasn’t much help, but it saved him from facing the lip that was starting to slightly tremble at the top of his vision or the chest that was starting to heave below it.

Vegeta held out his hand, “Good…,” shit, his voice failed him; he gulped and continued on, “Good night and good… bye, Miss Briefs.”  He never even got to say her name.  But at least he got to hear her say his.  That would have to suffice him when he was alone at night.

Slowly her wet, shaking hand slid into his.  He gripped it, but it was limp.  She wasn’t shaking back, but he shook then released her hand, turned, nodded to the children, “Good night, kids,” and left.

*                      *                      *

The door shut quietly behind him, but it was like a thunder clap in his ears.  His hand shook violently as it released the could metal of the doorknob.  For a moment, his eyes weren’t able to focus on anything other than nothing around him looked like he was still in her apartment.  Then his eyes found the top of the staircase.  He hurried for it.  The top of the railing felt cold and harsh beneath his hot, sweaty palm.  It was a taste of the cold slap of reali—

“Vegeta,” the voice was soft and timid and the last thing he wanted to hear right now.

He froze.  Heard the soft _click_ of the door and the soft pad of hesitant footsteps.  He hadn’t wanted this, he hadn’t wanted her to be hesitant around him.

“Vegeta?”

He closed his eyes and turned around to face her.  Two steps, he had made it two steps down the stairs.  He opened his eyes.  She was a pitiful sight.  Hands fidgeting nervously in front of her, she looked on the verge of tears.  It ripped at him to think that she… that she thought as much of him as he did her; otherwise, why would she look like this?  Why would she be this hurt?  As hurt as he was.

“Miss Briefs—”

“Call me Bulma.”

He frowned.  He wanted to.  God, he wanted to.

“Miss Briefs—”

“Please.”  She took a step forward like his saying her name was some magical spell that would ward off evil.

He sighed and closed his eyes.  Lowering his head for a moment—He felt a soft, damp hand against his cheek.  He opened his eyes.  She was standing on the step just above his, the first step of the staircase.  There was so much in her eyes.  For a moment, he was completely lost.

“I’m sorry I… I, I didn’t mean it.  Okay, it’s just… they’re a family.  They’ve made a family all their own in this Hell and I can’t,” she sniffed, tears brimming on the edges of sapphire oceans, “I can’t… I can’t…”

She cracked and his hand went to her cheek, “Shhhh, shhhh, it’s alright, it’s alright,” he soothed softly.

She turned her face into his palm, on the brink of sobbing into it.  Trying desperately to use his own strength and comfort of her to keep the tears at bay.

“Bulma,” he whispered.  Her eyes went wide.  She stared at him.  Her name felt so good on his lips.  “It’s alright, I swear.”  His first promise to her to go with his first utterance of her name.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.  I forgot all about them.  I… I forgot about a lot of things lately… because… I’m too busy thinking about you.”

His heart fluttered and his stomach clenched violently.  She did.  She did want him as much as he wanted her.

“I…  They…”  She looked away, searching for words to put to thoughts.

“You’re right.”  He blurted out.  She stared at him.  “I don’t know anything about any of them for sure.”

She smiled at him and he felt his whole world turn on that smile, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome… Bulma.”  _God, it sounds so good_.

She reached up and held his face in her hands.  Then she leaned in and her soft, warm lips were on his.  He couldn’t help himself.  He took her tiny waist in his hands, tilted his head, and went in for a deeper, more passionate kiss.  She wrapped her arms around his neck, sighing into him.  He wrapped his arms around her waist, drawing her in close.  After a few moments, she broke their kiss to nuzzle him.  He never felt more turned on in his life.

“They won’t be over tomorrow night.  I can be all yours all night.”

All his… _Fuck_.

He nodded, grinning, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Woman.”

“Tomorrow,” she grinned and tilted her head, going in for another kiss.

He squeezed her to him for a moment before the kiss broke, he let go of her, turned, and walked away down the stairs.  Once on a landing out of her sight, he nearly jumped up and pumped his fist in the air, nearly hooted with joy.


End file.
